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THE BIOGRAPHICAL EDITION 

OF THE WORKS OF 

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 
AN INLAND VOYAGE 



THE BIOGRAPHICAL EDITION 
OF STEVENSON'S WORKS 

NOVELS jiND ROMyiNCES 

TREASURE ISLAND 

PRINCE OTTO 

KIDNAPPED 

THE BLACK ARROW 

THE MASTER OF BALLANTRAE 

THE WRONG BOX 

THE WRECKER 

DAVID BALFOUR 

THE EBB-TIDE 

WEIR OF HERMISTON 

ST. IVES 

SHORTER STORIES 

NEW ARABIAN NIGHTS 

THE DYNAMITER 

THE MERRY MEN, containing DR. 

JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE 
ISLAND NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENTS 

ESSAYS, TRAVELS, AND SKETCHES 

AN INLAND VOYAGE 

TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

VIRGINIBUS PUERISQ^UE 

FAMILIAR STUDIES 

THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS, fo«f<j/n- 

ing THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
IN THE SOUTH SEAS 
ACROSS THE PLAINS 

POEMS 
COMPLETE POEMS 

Twenty-four volumes. Sold singly or in sets 
Per vol.. Cloth, ^I.OO ; Limp Leather, $1.2^ net. 

Charles Scribner's Sons, New York 



BIOGRAPHICAL EDITION 



AN INLAND 
VOYAGE 

BY 

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 



iriTH A PREFACE BY MRS. STEFENSON 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1905 



*t<» 



LIBRARY of CONGftESSf 
Two Copies rieceiveu 

JUN 24 1905 

Jouyfijfni tiiifv 
COPY b. 









y.o,^ 



Copyright^ igo^ 
By Charles Scribner's Sons 



THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A. 



PREFACE 

TO 

THE BIOGRAPHICAL EDITION 

WE 'RE far frae hame/' murmured a 
dying Scot, when my husband found 
him lying on the floor of a native hut 
in one of the islands of the Tukalau group. It 
seems strange that with a love of home only 
equalled by the Swiss, the Scot should be the great- 
est wanderer on the face of the earth, excepting 
the Jew, who has, at least, the excuse of belonging 
to a race without a country. 

My husband was born with the Scottish longing 
to get to '' the back of beyond " ; in his very 
nursery he strained at the tether strings, and was 
never so happy as when allowed to accompany his 
mother in her journeys to the South of France. 
There, in Mentone, the child acquired an accent 

Copyright, 1905, by Charles Scribner's Sons 



vi PREFACE 

and vocabulary that remained with him all the rest 
of his life. He knew little of the French grammar 
(or, indeed, of any grammar) but spoke the ver- 
nacular with a freedom and accuracy that caused 
him to be accepted everywhere by the French as 
one of themselves, though perhaps from another 
province. Once in Nice, when exhausted by a 
long walk, he stopped to rest at a low drinking- 
place. A couple of villainous looking fellows at 
the next table ceased speaking, regarded him in- 
tently for a few moments, listening to his order, 
and then resumed their conversation, satisfied that 
they had nothing to fear. They were discussing 
their hatred of the English, and the possibility of 
drugging and robbing the first Englishman who 
should enter the place. 

As the boy grew into manhood the Scottish 
unrest and his own adventurous spirit made a life 
of inaction almost unendurable; it was only the 
knowledge that such a course would break his 
father's heart that held him back from accepting 
the advice of Mr. Seed (afterwards premier of 
New Zealand) to go to the Samoan Islands. How 



PREFACE vii 

he would have paid his passage I cannot conceive, 
as the small amount of pocket money allowed him 
by his father not only would have been insufHcient 
for the purpose, but he had an invalid friend lying 
in the hospital whose comfort depended on that 
infinitesimal sum. For a long while he was fain 
to content himself with inactive roving. To the 
end of his life he found the keenest pleasure in the 
study of a map, especially one of roads. Like 
Branwell Bronte, of whom he could never speak 
without emotion, he would sit poring over maps, 
making imaginary journeys. Like young Bronte, 
too, he knew the hours when the railway trains 
of London and Paris started, and when outgoing 
passenger ships left English and French ports. 
'' Poor cage bird! " he cries. " Do I not rememben 
the time when I myself haunted the station, to 
watch train after train carry its complement of ; 
passengers into the night, and read the names of 
distant places on the time bills with indescribable 
longing?" 

In his early twenties the stern parental discipline 
relaxed to a degree, and the son, whose uncertain 



viii PREFACE 

health began to show the hereditary weakness de- 
rived from his mother, was allowed more freedom. 
He was sent to Germany for a vacation with Sir 
Walter Simpson in 1872, and after an attack of 
diphtheria, in 1873, ^"^^^ ordered to the South of 
France by Dr. Andrew Clarke. The latter excur- 
sion was, however, only made possible by the inter- 
vention of Mr. Sidney Colvin, between whom and 
the attractive, brilliant boy a lifelong friendship 
had already begun. 

Sir Walter Simpson, son of the famous physi- 
cian, was a reticent, cautious man, who came to no 
decision until the question involved had been care- 
fully examined on all sides. Scrupulously honest 
himself, he judged others with an extraordinary 
generosity. Indeed, his leniency towards the faults 
of others very nearly touched the borders of cyni- 
cism. He was a loyal friend, and possessed those 
rare qualities which make a man a desirable com- 
panion. The intimacy between him and Louis 
Stevenson began when both were attending the 
University of Edinburgh, and was further ce- 
mented by their common love of the sea. The two 



PREFACE ix 

had already made several short cruises along the 
Scottish coast, in a boat belonging to Sir Walter, 
when the canoe voyage was planned. 

By this time Louis Stevenson had made a slight 
mark in literature, and a little money, by writing 
magazine articles, so that he now felt capable of at 
least paying his way in a very modest fashion on 
the projected inland voyage; and, besides, he 
hoped to write an account of the trip which should 
cover the expenses of a second venture. For this 
book, The Inland Voyage, he received from Mr. 
Kegan Paul the amount of twenty pounds ; but he 
had gained in health, and had grown to know 
better the character of the French peasant and 
villager. 

F. V. DE G. S. 



TO 

SIR WALTER GRINDLAY SIMPSON, Bart. 

My dear Cigarette, 

It was enough that you should have shared so liberally in 
the rams and portages of our voyage; that you should have 
had so hard a battle to recover the derelict Arethusa on the 
flooded Oise ; and that you should thenceforth have piloted a 
mere wreck of mankind to Origny vSainte-Benoite and a supper 
so eagerly desired. It was perhaps more than enough, as you 
once somewhat piteously complained, that I should have set 
down all the strong language to you, and kept the appropriate 
reflexions for myself. I could not in decency expose you to 
share the disgrace of another and more public shipwreck. But 
now that this voyage of ours is going into a cheap edition, that 
peril, we shall hope, is at an end, and I may put your name on 
the burgee. 

But I cannot pause till I have lamented the fate of our two 
ships. That, sir, was not a fortunate day when we projected 
the possession of a canal barge ; it was not a fortunate day 
when we shared our day-dream with the most hopeful of day- 
dreamers. For a while, indeed, the world looked smilingly. 
The barge was procured and christened, and as the Eleveii 
Thousand Virgins of Cologne^ lay for some months, the ad- 
mired of all admirers, in a pleasant river and under the walls 
of an ancient town. M. Mattras, the accomplished carpenter 
of Moret, had made her a centre of emulous labour ; and you 



Xll 



DEDICATION 



will not have forgotten the amount of sweet champagne con- 
sumed in the inn at the bridge end, to give zeal to the work- 
men and speed to the work. On the financial aspect, I would 
not willingly dwell. The Eleven Thousand Virgins of CologJic 
rotted in the stream where she was beautified. She felt not 
the impulse of the breeze ; she was never harnessed to the 
patient track-horse. And when at length she was sold, by the 
indignant carpenter of Moret, there were sold along with her 
the Arethusa and the Cigarette, she of cedar, she, as we knew 
so keenly on a portage, of solid-hearted English oak. Now 
these historic vessels fly the tricolor and are known by new and 

alien names. 

R. L. S. 



PREFACE 

TO equip so small a book with a preface 
is, I am half afraid, to sin against pro- 
portion. But a preface is more than an 
author can resist, for it is the reward of his 
labours. When the foundation stone is laid, the 
architect appears with his plans, and struts for 
an hour before the public eye. So with the 
writer in his preface : he may have never a word 
to say, but he must show himself for a moment 
in the portico, hat in hand, and with an urbane 
demeanour. 

It is best, in such circumstance, to represent a 
delicate shade of manner between humility and 
superiority : as if the book had been written by 
some one else, and you had merely run over it 
and inserted what was good. But for my part 
I have not yet learned the trick to that perfection; 
I am not yet able to dissemble the warmth of 



xiv PREFACE 

my sentiments towards a reader; and if I meet 
him on the threshold, it is to invite him in with 
country cordiaHty. 

To say truth, I had no sooner finished reading 
this httle book in proof than I was seized upon 
by a distressing apprehension. 

It occurred to me that I might not only be the 
first to read these pages, but the last as well ; that 
I might have pioneered this very smiling tract of 
country all in vain, and find not a soul to follow 
in my steps. The more I thought, the more I 
disliked the notion; until the distaste grew into 
a sort of panic terror, and I rushed into this 
Preface, which is no more than an advertisement 
for readers. 

What am I to say for my book? Caleb and 
Joshua brought back from Palestine a formidable 
bunch of grapes ; alas ! my book produces naught 
so nourishing; and for the matter of that, we 
live in an age when people prefer a definition to 
any quantity of fruit. 

I wonder, would a negative be found enticing? 
for, from the negative point of view, I flatter my- 



PREFACE XV 

self this volume has a certain stamp. Although 
it runs to considerably upwards of two hundred 
pages, it contains not a single reference to the 
imbecility of God's universe, nor so much as a 
single hint that I could have made a better one 
myself, — I really do not know where my head 
can have been. I seemed to have forgotten all 
that makes it glorious to be man. 'T is an omis- 
sion that renders the book philosophically unim- 
portant; but I am in hopes the eccentricity may 
please in frivolous circles. 

To the friend who accompanied me I owe many 
thanks already, indeed I wish I owed him nothing 
else; but at this moment I feel towards him an 
almost exaggerated tenderness. He, at least, will 
become my reader — if it were only to follow his 

own travels alongside of mine. 

R. L. S. 



CONTENTS 

Page 

Antwerp to Boom i 

On the Willebroek Canal 8 

The Royal Sport Nautique 17 

At Maubeuge 26 

On the Sambre Canalised : to Quartes ... 34 
Pont-sur-Sambre : — 

We are Pedlars 43 

The Travelling Merchant 52 

On the Sambre Canalised : to Landrecies . . 60 

At Landrecies 68 

Sambre and Oise Canal: Canal Boats .... 'jd 

The Oise in Flood 84 

Origny Sainte-BenoIte : — 

A By-Day 97 

The Company at Table 107 

Down the Oise: to Moy 118 

La F^re of Cursed Memory 127 

Down the Oise : through the Golden Valley . 137 

NoYON Cathedral 141 

Down the Oise : to CoMPitexE 149 

At CoMPifeGNE 153 

Changed Times 161 

Down the Oise: Church Interiors 171 

Precy and the Marionettes 182 

Back to the World 199 

Epilogue to "An Inland Voyage" 205 



AN INLAND VOYAGE 

ANTWERP TO BOOM 

WE made a great stir in Antwerp Docks. 
A stevedore and a lot of dock porters 
took up the two canoes, and ran with 
them for the sHp. A crowd of children followed 
cheering. The Cigarette went off in a splash and 
a bubble of small breaking water. Next moment 
the Arethnsa w^as after her. A steamer was com- 
ing down, men on the paddle-box shouted hoarse 
warnings, the stevedore and his porters were bawl- 
ing from the quay. But in a stroke or two the 
canoes were away out in the middle of the Scheldt, 
and all steamers, and stevedores, and other 'long- 
shore vanities were left behind. 

The sun shone brightly ; the tide was making — 
four jolly miles an hour; the wind blew steadily, 
with occasional squalls. For my part, I had never 
been in a canoe under sail in my life ; and my first 



2 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

experiment out in the middle of this big river was 
not made without some trepidation. What would 
happen when the wind first caught my little can- 
vas? I suppose it was almost as trying a venture 
into the regions of the unknown as to publish a first 
book, or to marry. But my doubts were not of 
long duration; and in five minutes you will not 
be surprised to learn that I had tied my sheet. 

I own I was a little struck by this circumstance 
myself ; of course, in company with the rest of my 
fellow-men, I had always tied the sheet in a sailing- 
boat; but in so little and crank a concern as a 
canoe, and with these charging squalls, I was not 
prepared to find myself follow the same principle; 
and it inspired me with some contemptuous views 
of our regard for life. It is certainly easier to 
smoke with the sheet fastened; but I had never 
before weighed a comfortable pipe of tobacco 
against an obvious risk, and gravely elected for 
the comfortable pipe. It is a commonplace, that 
we cannot answer for ourselves before we have 
been tried. But it is not so common a reflection, 
and surely more consoling, that we usually find our- 



ANTWERP TO BOOM 3 

selves a great deal braver and better than we 
thought. I believe this is every one's experience : 
but an apprehension that they may belie themselves 
in the future prevents mankind from trumpeting 
this cheerful sentiment abroad. I wish sincerely, 
for it would have saved me much trouble, there had 
been some one to put me in a good heart about life 
when I was younger; to tell me how dangers are 
most portentous on a distant sight; and how the 
good in a man's spirit will not suffer itself to be 
overlaid, and rarely or never deserts him in the 
hour of need. But we are all for tootling on the 
sentimental flute in literature; and not a man 
among us will go to the head of the march to sound 
the heady drums. 

It was agreeable upon the river. A barge or two 
went past laden with hay. Reeds and willows bor- 
dered the stream; and cattle and grey, venerable 
horses came and hung their mild heads over the 
embankment. Here and there was a pleasant vil- 
lage among trees, with a noisy shipping-yard ; here 
and there a villa in a lawn. The wind served us 
well up the Scheldt and thereafter up the Rupel ; 



4 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

and we were running pretty free when we began 
to sight the brickyards of Boom, lying for a long 
way on the right bank of the river. The left bank 
w^as still green and pastoral, with alleys of trees 
along the embankment, and here and there a flight 
of steps to serve a ferry, where perhaps there sat 
a woman with her elbows on her knees, or an old 
gentleman with a staff and silver spectacles. But 
Boom and its brickyards grew smokier and shab- 
bier with every minute; until a great church with 
a clock, and a wooden bridge over the river, indi- 
cated the central quarters of the town. 

Boom is not a nice place, and is only remarkable 
for one thing: that the majority of the inhabitants 
have a private opinion that they can speak English, 
wdiich is not justified by fact. This gave a kind of 
haziness to our intercourse. As for the Hotel de 
la Navigation, I think it is the worst feature of the 
place. It boasts of a sanded parlour, with a bar at 
one end, looking on the street ; and another sanded 
parlour, darker and colder, with an empty bird-cage 
and a tricolor subscription box by way of sole 
adornment, where we made shift to dine in the 



ANTWERP TO BOOM 5 

company of three uncommunicative engineer ap- 
prentices and a silent bagman. The food, as usual 
in Belgium, was of a nondescript occasional char- 
acter ; indeed I have never been able to detect any- 
thing in the nature of a meal among this pleasing 
people ; they seem to peck and trifle with viands all 
day long in an amateur spirit : tentatively French, 
truly German, and somehow falling between the 
two. 

The empty bird-cage, swept and garnished, and 
with no trace of the old piping favourite, save 
where two wires had been pushed apart to hold its 
lump of sugar, carried with it a sort of graveyard 
cheer. The engineer apprentices would have noth- 
ing to say to us, nor indeed to the bagman; but 
talked low and sparingly to one another, or raked 
us in the gaslight with a gleam of spectacles. For 
though handsome lads, they were all (in the Scotch 
phrase) barnacled. 

There was an English maid in the hotel, who 
had been long enough out of England to pick 
up all sorts of funny foreign idioms, and all sorts 
of curious foreign ways, which need not here be 



6 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

specified. She spoke to us very fluently in her 
jargon, asked us information as to the manners of 
the present day in England, and obligingly cor- 
rected us when we attempted to answer. But as we 
were dealing with a woman, perhaps our informa- 
tion was not so much thrown away as it appeared. 
The sex likes to pick up knowledge and yet pre- 
serve its superiority. It is good policy, and almost 
necessary in the circumstances. If a man finds 
a woman admires him, were it only for his ac- 
quaintance with geography, he will begin at once 
to build upon the admiration. It is only by uninter- 
mittent snubbing that the pretty ones can keep us 
in our place. Men, as Miss Howe or Miss Harlowe 
would have said, " are such encroachers.'' For 
my part, I am body and soul with the women ; and 
after a well-married couple, there is nothing so 
beautiful in the world as the myth of the divine 
huntress. It is no use for a man to take to the 
woods ; we know him ; Anthony tried the same 
thing long ago, and had a pitiful time of it by all 
accounts. But there is this about some women, 
which overtops the best gymnosophist among men, 



ANTWERP TO BOOM 7 

that they suffice to themselves, and can walk in 
a high and cold zone without the countenance of 
any trousered being. I declare, although the re- 
verse of a professed ascetic, I am more obliged to 
women for this ideal than I should be to the 
majority of them, or indeed to any but one, for a 
spontaneous kiss. There is nothing so encourag- 
ing as the spectacle of self-sufficiency. And when 
I think of the slim and lovely maidens, running the 
w^oods all night to the note of Diana's horn; mov- 
ing among the old oaks, as fancy-free as they; 
things of the forest and the starlight, not touched 
by the commotion of man's hot and turbid life — 
although there are plenty other ideals that I should 
prefer — I find my heart beat at the thought of 
this one. 'T is to fail in life, but to fail with what 
a grace! That is not lost which is not regretted. 
And where — here slips out the male — where 
would be much of the glory of inspiring love, if 
there were no contempt to overcome? 



ON THE WILLEBROEK CANAL 

NEXT morning, when we set forth on the 
Willebroek Canal, the rain began heavy 
and chill. The water of the canal stood 
at about the drinking temperature of tea; and 
under this cold aspersion, the surface was covered 
with steam. The exhilaration of departure, and 
the easy motion of the boats under each stroke of 
the paddles, supported us through this misfortune 
while it lasted ; and when the cloud passed and 
the sun came out again, our spirits went up above 
the range of stay-at-home humours. A good breeze 
rustled and shivered in the rows of trees that 
bordered the canal. The leaves flickered in and out 
of the light in tumultuous masses. It seemed 
sailing weather to eye and ear; but down between 
the banks, the wind reached us only in faint and 
desultory puffs. There was hardly enough to steer 
by. Progress was intermittent and unsatisfactory. 



WILLEBROEK CANAL 9 

A jocular person, of marine antecedents, hailed 
us from the tow-path with a '' C'est vite, iiiais 
c'cst long." 

The canal was busy enough. Every now and 
then we met or overtook a long string of boats, 
with great green tillers ; high sterns with a window 
on either side of the rudder, and perhaps a jug or 
a flower-pot in one of the windows; a dingy fol- 
lowing behind ; a woman busied about the day's 
dinner, and a handful of children. These barges 
were all tied one behind the other with tow-ropes, 
to the number of twenty-iive or thirty; and the 
line was headed and kept in motion by a steamer 
of strange construction. It had neither paddle- 
wheel nor screw ; but by some gear not rightly 
comprehensible to the unmechanical mind, it 
fetched up over its bow a small bright chain which 
lay along the bottom of the canal, and paying it 
out again over the stern, dragged itself forward, 
link by link, with its whole retinue of loaded scows. 
Until one had found out the key to the enigma, 
there was something solemn and uncomfortable 
in the progress of one of these trains, as it moved 



lo AN INLAND VOYAGE 

gently along the water with nothing to mark its 
advance but an eddy alongside dying away into 
the wake. 

Of all the creatures of commercial enterprise, a 
canal barge is by far the most delightful to con- 
sider. It may spread its sails, and then you see it 
sailing high above the tree-tops and the wind-mill, 
sailing on the aqueduct, sailing through the green 
corn-lands : the most picturesque of things am- 
phibious. Or the horse plods along at a foot-pace 
as if there were no such thing as business in the 
world; and the man dreaming at the tiller sees 
the same spire on the horizon all day long. It is 
a mystery how things ever get to their destination 
at this rate; and to see the barges waiting their 
turn at a lock, affords a fine lesson of how easily 
the world may be taken. There should be many 
contented spirits on board, for such a life is both 
to travel and to stay at home. 

The chimney smokes for dinner as you go along ; 
the banks of the canal slovv^ly unroll their scenery 
to contemplative eyes; the barge floats by great 
forests and through great cities with their public 



WILLEBROEK CANAL ii 

buildings and their lamps at night; and for the 
bargee, in his floating home, '' travelling abed," it 
is merely as if he were listening to another man's 
story or turning the leaves of a picture book in 
which he had no concern. He may take his after- 
noon walk in some foreign country on the banks 
of the canal, and then come home to dinner at his 
own fireside. 

There is not enough exercise in such a life for 
any high measure of health; but a high measure 
of health is only necessary for unhealthy people. 
The slug of a fellow, who is never ill nor well, 
has a quiet time of it in life, and dies all the 
easier. 

I am sure I would rather be a bargee than occupy 
any position under Heaven that required attend- 
ance at an office. There are few callings, I should 
say, where a man gives up less of his liberty in 
return for regular meals. The bargee is on ship- 
board ; he is master in his own ship ; he can land 
whenever he will ; he can never be kept beating 
off a lee-shore a whole frosty night when the sheets 
are as hard as iron ; and so far as I can make out, 



12 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

time stands as nearly still with him as is com- 
patible with the return of bedtime or the dinner- 
hour. It is not easy to see why a bargee should 
ever die. 

Half-way between Willebroek and Villevorde, 
in a beautiful reach of canal like a squire's avenue, 
we went ashore to lunch. There were two eggs, 
a junk of bread, and a bottle of wine on board the 
Arethusa; and two eggs and an Etna cooking ap- 
paratus on board the Cigarette. The master of the 
latter boat smashed one of the eggs in the course 
of disembarkation; but observing pleasantly that 
it might still be cooked a la papier, he dropped it 
into the Etna, in its covering of Flemish news- 
paper. We landed in a blink of fine weather ; but 
we had not been two minutes ashore before the 
wind freshened into half a gale, and the rain began 
to patter on our shoulders. We sat as close about 
the Etna as we could. The spirits burned Avith 
great ostentation; the grass caught flame every 
minute or two, and had to be trodden out; and 
before long there were several burnt fingers of the 
party. But the solid quantity of cookery accom- 



WILLEBROEK CANAL 13 

plished was out of proportion with so much dis- 
play ; and when we desisted, after two apphcations 
of the fire, the sound egg was a httle more than 
loo-warm ; and as for a la papier, it was a cold and 
sordid fricassee of printer's ink and broken egg- 
shell. We made shift to roast the other two by 
putting them close to the burning spirits, and that 
with better success. And then we uncorked the 
bottle of wine, and sat down in a ditch with our 
canoe aprons over our knees. It rained smartly. 
Discomfort, when it is honestly uncomfortable and 
makes no nauseous pretensions to the contrary, is 
a vastly humourous business; and people well 
steeped and stupefied in the open air are in a good 
vein for laughter. From this point of view, even 
egg a la papier offered by way of food may pass 
muster as a sort of accessory to the fun. But this 
manner of jest, although it may be taken in good 
part, does not invite repetition ; and from that 
time forward the Etna voyaged like a gentleman 
in the locker of the Cigarette. 

It is almost unnecessary to mention that when 
lunch was over and we got aboard again and 



14 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

made sail, the wind promptly died away. The 
rest of the journey to Villevorde we still spread 
our canvas to the unfavouring air, and with now 
and then a puff, and now and then a spell of 
paddling, drifted along from lock to lock between 
the orderly trees. 

It was a fine, green, fat landscape, or rather a 
mere green water-lane going on from village to 
village. Things had a settled look, as in places 
long lived in. Crop-headed children spat upon 
us from the bridges as we went below, with a 
true conservative feeling. But even more conser- 
vative were the fishermen, intent upon their floats, 
who let us go by without one glance. They 
perched upon sterlings and buttresses and along 
the slope of the embankment, gently occupied. 
They were indifferent like pieces of dead nature. 
They did not move any more than if they had 
been fishing in an old Dutch print. The leaves 
fluttered, the water lapped, but they continued in 
one stay, like so many churches established by law. 
You might have trepanned every one of their in- 
nocent heads and found no more than so much 



WILLEBROEK CANAL 15 

coiled fishing-line below their skulls. I do not 
care for your stalwart fellows in india-rubber 
stockings breasting up mountain torrents with a 
salmon rod; but I do dearly love the class of 
man who plies his unfruitful art for ever and a 
day by still and depopulated waters. 

At the lock just beyond Villevorde there was 
a lock mistress who spoke French comprehen- 
sibly, and told us we were still a couple of 
leagues from Brussels, At the same place the 
rain began again. It fell in straight, parajlel 
lines, and the surface of the canal was thrown 
up into an infinity of little crystal fountains. 
There were no beds to be had in the neigh- 
bourhood. Nothing for it but to lay the sails 
aside and address ourselves to steady paddling 
in the rain. 

Beautiful country houses, with clocks and long 
lines of shuttered windows, and fine old trees 
standing in groves and avenues, gave a rich and 
sombre aspect in the rain and the deepening dusk 
to the shores of the canal. I seem to have seen 
something of the same effect in engravings: opu- 



i6 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

lent landscapes, deserted and overhung with the 
passage of storm. And throughout we had the 
escort of a hooded cart, which trotted shabbily 
along the tow-path, and kept at an almost uni- 
form distance in our wake. 



THE ROYAL SPORT NAUTIQUE 

THE Fain took off near Laeken. But the 
sun was already down ; the air was chill ; 
and we had scarcely a dry stitch between 
the pair of us. Nay, now we found ourselves near 
the end of the Allee Verte, and on the very thresh- 
old of Brussels we were confronted by a serious 
difficulty. The shores were closely lined by canal 
boats waiting their turn at the lock. Nowhere 
was there any convenient landing-place; nowhere 
so much as a stable-yard to leave the canoes in 
for the night. We scrambled ashore and entered 
an estaminet where some sorry fellows were drink- 
ing with the landlord. The landlord was pretty 
round with us ; he knew of no coach-house or 
stable-yard, nothing of the sort; and seeing wx 
had come with no mind to drink, he did not con- 
ceal his impatience to be rid of us. One of the 
sorry fellows came to the rescue. Somewhere in 



i8 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

the corner of the basin there was a shp, he in- 
formed us, and something else besides, not very 
clearly defined by him, but hopefully construed by 
his hearers. 

Sure enough there was the slip in the corner 
of the basin ; and at the top of it two nice-looking 
lads in boating-clothes. The Arethusa addressed 
himself to these. One of them said there would 
be no difficulty about a night's lodging for our 
boats ; and the other, taking a cigarette from his 
lips, inquired if they were made by Searle & Son. 
The name was quite an introduction. Half-a- 
dozen other young men came out of a boat-house 
bearing the superscription Royal Sport Nau- 
TiQUE, and joined in the talk. They were all very 
polite, voluble, and enthusiastic ; and their discourse 
was interlarded with English boating-terms, and 
the names of English boat-builders and English 
clubs. I do not know, to my shame, any spot in my 
native land, where I should have been so warmly 
received by the same number of people. We were 
English boating-men, and the Belgian boating-men 
fell upon our necks. I wonder if French Hugue- 



SPORT NAUTIQUE 19 

nots were as cordially greeted by English Prot- 
estants when they came across the Channel out 
of great tribulation. But, after all, what religion 
knits people so closely as common sport? 

The canoes were carried into the boat-house; 
they were washed down for us by the club ser- 
vants, the sails were hung out to dry, and every- 
thing made as snug and tidy as a picture. And 
in the meanwhile we were led upstairs by our 
new-found brethren, for so more than one of them 
stated the relationship, and made free of their 
lavatory. This one lent us soap, that one a towel, 
a third and fourth helped us to undo our bags. 
And all the time such questions, such assurances 
of respect and sympathy! I declare I never knew 
what glory was before. 

" Yes, yes, the Royal Sport Nautiquc is the old- 
est club in Belgium." 

" We number two hundred." 

" We " — this is not a substantive speech, but 
an abstract of many speeches, the impression left 
upon my mind after a great deal of talk; and 
very youthful, pleasant, natural, and patriotic it 



20 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

seems to me to be — '' We have gained all races, 
except those where we were cheated by the French." 

" You must leave all your wet things to be 
dried." 

"O! cntrc frercs ! In any boat-house in Eng- 
land we should find the same." (I cordially hope 
they might.) 

'' En Angle t err e, vous employes des sliding-seats, 
n'est-ce pas f " 

" We are all employed in commerce during the 
day; but in the evening, voycz-vons, nous sommes 
serieitx." 

These were the words. They were all employed 
over the frivolous mercantile concerns of Belgium 
during the day; but in the evening they found 
some hours for the serious concerns of life. I may 
have a wrong idea of wisdom, but I think that 
was a very wise remark. People connected with 
literature and philosophy are busy all their days 
in getting rid of second-hand notions and false 
standards. It is their profession, in the sweat of 
their brows, by dogged thinking, to recover their 
old fresh view of life, and distinguish what they 



SPORT NAUTIQUE 21 

really and originally like from what they have 
only learned to tolerate perforce. And these Royal 
Nautical Sportsmen had the distinction still quite 
legible in their hearts. They had still those clean 
perceptions of what is nice and nasty, what is in- 
teresting and what is dull, which envious old gen- 
tlemen refer to as illusions. The nightmare illusion 
of middle age, the bear's hug of custom gradually 
squeezing the life out of a man's soul, had not 
yet begun for these happy-star'd young Belgians. 
They still knew that the interest they took in their 
business was a trifling affair compared to their 
spontaneous, long-suffering affection for nautical 
sports. To know what you prefer, instead of 
humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you 
you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul 
alive. Such a man may be generous; he may be 
honest in something more than the commercial 
sense; he may love his friends w^ith an elective, 
personal sympathy, and not accept them as an ad- 
junct of the station to which he has been called. 
He may be a man, in short, acting on his own 
instincts, keeping in his own shape that God made 



22 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

him in ; and not a mere crank in the social engine- 
house, welded on principles that he does not un- 
derstand, and for purposes that he does not care 
for. 

For will any one dare to tell me that business 
is more entertaining than fooling among boats? 
He must have never seen a boat, or never seen 
an office, who says so. And for certain the one 
is a great deal better for the health. There should 
be nothing so much a man's business as his amuse- 
ments. Nothing but money-grubbing can be put 
forward to the contrary; no one but 

Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell 
From Heaven, 

durst risk a word in answer. It is but a lying 
cant that would represent the merchant and the 
banker as people disinterestedly toiling for man- 
kind, and then most useful when they are most 
absorbed in their transactions ; for the man is 
more important than his services. And when my 
Royal Nautical Sportsman shall have so far fallen 
from his hopeful youth that he cannot pluck up 
an enthusiasm over anything but his ledger, I ven- 



SPORT NAUTIQUE 23 

ture to doubt whether he will be near so nice a 
fellow, and whether he would w^elcome, with so 
good a grace, a couple of drenched Englishmen 
paddling into Brussels in the dusk. 

When we had changed our wet clothes and 
drunk a glass of pale ale to the club's prosperity, 
one of their number escorted us to a hotel. He 
would not join us at our dinner, but he had no 
objection to a glass of wine. Enthusiasm is very 
wearing; and I begin to understand why prophets 
were unpopular in Judaea, where they were best 
known. For three stricken hours did this excellent 
young man sit beside us to dilate on boats and 
boat-races ; and before he left, he was kind enough 
to order our bedroom candles. 

We endeavoured now and again to change the 
subject ; but the diversion did not last a moment : 
the Royal Nautical Sportsman bridled, shied, an- 
swered the question, and then breasted once more 
into the swelling tide of his subject. I call it his 
subject ; but I think it was he who was subjected. 
The ArctJiusa, who holds all racing as a creature 
of the devil, found himself in a pitiful dilemma. 



24 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

He durst not own his ignorance for the honour 
of old England, and spoke away about English 
clubs and English oarsmen whose fame had never 
before come to his ears. Several times, and once, 
above all, on the question of sliding-seats, he was 
within an ace of exposure. As for the Cigarette, 
who has rowed races in the heat of his blood, but 
now disowns these slips of his wanton youth, his 
case was still more desperate; for the Royal Nau- 
tical proposed that he should take an oar in one 
of their eights on the morrow, to compare the 
English with the Belgian stroke. I could see my 
friend perspiring in his chair whenever that par- 
ticular topic came up. And there was yet another 
proposal which had the same effect on both of 
us. It appeared that the champion canoeist of 
Europe (as well as most other champions) was a 
Royal Nautical Sportsman. And if we would only 
wait until the Sunday, this infernal paddler would 
be so condescending as to accompany us on our 
next stage. Neither of us had the least desire to 
drive the coursers of the sun against Apollo. 

When the young man was gone, we counter- 



SPORT NAUTIQUE 25 

manded our candles, and ordered some brandy and 
water. The great billows had gone over our head. 
The Royal Nautical Sportsmen were as nice young 
fellows as a man would wish to see, but they were 
a trifle too young and a thought too nautical for 
us. We began to see that we were old and cyni- 
cal ; we liked ease and the agreeable rambling of 
the human mind about this and the other subject; 
we did not want to disgrace our native land by 
messing at eight, or toiling pitifully in the wake 
of the champion canoeist. In short, we had re- 
course to flight. It seemed ungrateful, but we 
tried to make that good on a card loaded with 
sincere compliments. And indeed it was no time 
for scruples ; we seemed to feel the hot breath 
of the champion on our necks. 



AT MAUBEUGE 

PARTLY from the terror we had of our 
good friends the Royal Nauticals, partly 
from the fact that there were no fewer 
than fifty-five locks between Brussels and Char- 
leroi, we concluded that we should travel by train 
across the frontier, boats and all. Fifty-five locks 
in a day's journey was pretty well tantamount 
to trudging the whole distance on foot, with the 
canoes upon our shoulders, an object of astonish- 
ment to the trees on the canal-side, and of honest 
derision to all right-thinking children. 

To pass the frontier, even in a train, is a diffi- 
cult matter for the Arethusa. He is, somehow or 
other, a marked man for the oi^cial eye. Wherever 
he journeys, there are the officers gathered to- 
gether. Treaties are solemnly signed, foreign min- 
isters, ambassadors, and consuls sit throned in 
state from China to Peru, and the union jack flut- 



AT MAUBEUGE 27 

ters on all the winds of heaven. Under these 
safeguards, portly clergymen, school-mistresses, 
gentlemen in grey tweed suits, and all the ruck 
and rabble of British touristry pour unhindered, 
Murray in hand, over the railways of the Conti- 
nent, and yet the slim person of the Arethusa is 
taken in the meshes, while these great fish go on 
their way rejoicing. If he travels without a pass- 
port, he is cast, without any figure about the mat- 
ter, into noisome dungeons : if his papers are in 
order, he is suffered to go his way indeed, but not 
until he has been humiliated by a general incredul- 
ity. He is a born British subject, yet he has never 
succeeded in persuading a single official of his 
nationality. He flatters himself he is indifferent 
honest ; yet he is rarely known for anything better 
than a spy, and there is no absurd and disreputable 
means of livelihood but has been attributed to him 
in some heat of official or popular distrust. . . . 

For the life of me I cannot understand it. I, 
too, have been knolled to church and sat at good 
men's feasts, but I bear no mark of it. I am as 
strange as a Jack Indian to their official spectacles. 



28 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

I might come from any part of the globe, it seems, 
except from where I do. My ancestors have la- 
boured in vain, and the glorious Constitution can- 
not protect me in my walks abroad. It is a great 
thing, believe me, to present a good normal type 
of the nation you belong to. 

Nobody else was asked for his papers on the 
way to Maubeuge, but I was; and although I 
clung to my rights, I had to choose at last be- 
tween accepting the humiliation and being left 
behind by the train. I was sorry to give way, 
but I wanted to get to Maubeuge. 

Maubeuge is a fortified town with a very good 
inn, the Grand Cerf. It seemed to be inhabited 
principally by soldiers and bagmen; at least, these 
were all that we saw except the hotel servants. 
We had to stay there some time, for the canoes 
were in no hurry to follow us, and at last stuck 
hopelessly in the custom-house until we went back 
to liberate them. There was nothing to do, noth- 
ing to see. We had good meals, which was a 
great matter, but that was all. 

The Cigarette was nearly taken up upon a 



AT MAUBEUGE 29 

charge of drawing the fortifications : a feat of 
which he was hopelessly incapable. And besides, 
as I suppose each belligerent nation has a plan of 
the other's fortified places already, these precau- 
tions are of the nature of shutting the stable door 
after the steed is away. But I have no doubt they 
help to keep up a good spirit at home. It is a 
great thing if you can persuade people that they 
are somehow or other partakers in a mystery. 
It makes them feel bigger. Even the Freemasons, 
who have been shown up to satiety, preserve a 
kind of pride; and not a grocer among them, 
however honest, harmless, and empty-headed he 
may feel himself to be at bottom, but comes home 
from one of their coonacula with a portentous 
significance for himself. 

It is an odd thing how happily two people, if 
there are two, can live in a place where they have 
no acquaintance. I think the spectacle of a whole 
life in which you have no part paralyses personal 
desire. You are content to become a mere spec- 
tator. The baker stands in his door; the colonel 
with his three medals goes by to the cafe at night ; 



30 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

the troops drum and trumpet and man the ram- 
parts as bold as so many Hons. It would task 
language to say how placidly you behold all this. 
In a place where you have taken some root you 
are provoked out of your indifference; you have 
a hand in the game, — your friends are fighting 
with the army. But in a strange town, not small 
enough to grow too soon familiar, nor so large 
as to have laid itself out for travellers, you stand 
so far apart from the business that you positively 
forget it would be possible to go nearer ; you have 
so little human interest around you that you do 
not remember yourself to be a man. Perhaps in 
a very short time you would be one no longer. 
Gymnosophists go into a wood with all nature 
seething around them, with romance on every side ; 
it would be much more to the purpose if they took 
up their abode in a dull country town where they 
should see just so much of humanity as to keep 
them from desiring more, and only the stale ex- 
ternals of man's life. These externals are as dead 
to us as so many formalities, and speak a dead 
language in our eyes and ears. They have no 



AT MAUBEUGE 31 

more meaning than an oath or a salutation. We 
are so much accustomed to see married couples 
going to church of a Sunday that we have clean 
forgotten what they represent; and novelists are 
driven to rehabilitate adultery, no less, when they 
wish to show us what a beautiful thing it is for a 
man and a woman to live for each other. 

One person in Maubeuge, however, showed me 
something more than his outside. That was the 
driver of the hotel omnibus : a mean enough look- 
ing little man, as well as I can remember, but with 
a spark of something human in his soul. He had 
heard of our little journey, and came to me at 
once in envious sympathy. How he longed to 
travel ! he told me. How he longed to be some- 
where else, and see the round world before he 
went into the grave! '' Here I am," said he. '' I 
drive to the station. Well. And then I drive 
back again to the hotel. And so on every day and 
all the week round. My God, is that life?" I 
could not say I thought it was — for him. He 
pressed me to tell him where I had been, and 
where I hoped to go; and as he listened, I de- 



32 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

clare the fellow sighed. Might not this have been 
a brave African traveller, or gone to the Indies 
after Drake? But it is an evil age for the gipsily 
inclined among men. He who can sit squarest 
on a three-legged stool, he it is who has the 
wealth and glory. 

I wonder if my friend is still driving the omni- 
bus for the Grand Ccrf! Not very likely, I be- 
lieve; for I think he was on the eve of mutiny 
wdien we passed through, and perhaps our pas- 
sage determined him for good. Better a thou- 
sand times that he should be a tramp, and mend 
pots and pans by the wayside, and sleep under 
trees, and see the dawn and the sunset every day 
above a new horizon. I think I hear you say that 
it is a respectable position to drive an omnibus? 
Very well. What right has he who likes it not 
to keep those who would like it dearly out of this 
respectable position? Suppose a dish were not 
to my taste, and you told me that it was a favourite 
among the rest of the company, what should I 
conclude from that ? Not to finish the dish against 
my stomach, I suppose. 



AT MAUBEUGE 33 

Respectability is a very good thing in its way, 
but it does not rise superior to all considerations. 
I would not for a moment venture to hint that 
it was a matter of taste; but I think I will go as 
far as this: that if a position is admittedly un- 
kind, uncomfortable, unnecessary, and superflu- 
ously useless, although it were as respectable as 
the Church of England, the sooner a man is out 
of it, the better for himself, and all concerned. 



ON THE SAMBRE CANALISED 

TO QUARTES 

yCBOUT three in the afternoon the whole 
/~^ estabHshment of the Grand Ccrf accom- 
panied us to the water's edge. The man 
of the omnibus was there with haggard eyes. Poor 
cage-bird ! Do I not remember the time when I 
myself haunted the station, to watch train after 
train carry its complement of freemen into the 
night, and read the names of distant places on 
the time-bills with indescribable longings? 

We were not clear of the fortifications before 
the rain began. The wind was contrary, and blew 
in furious gusts; nor were the aspects of nature 
any more clement than the doings of the sky. 
For we passed through a blighted country, sparsely 
covered with brush, but handsomely enough diver- 
sified with factory chimneys. We landed in a soiled 
meadow among some pollards, and there smoked 



ON THE SAMBRE 3s 

a pipe in a flaw of fair weather. But the wind 
blew so hard we could get little else to smoke. 
There were no natural objects in the neighbour- 
hood, but some sordid workshops. A group of 
children, headed by a tall girl, stood and watched 
us from a little distance all the time we stayed. 
I heartily wonder what they thought of us. 

At Hautmont, the lock was almost impassable; 
the landing-place being steep and high, and the 
launch at a long distance. Near a dozen grimy 
workmen lent us a hand. They refused any re- 
ward; and, what is much better, refused it hand- 
somely, without conveying any sense of insult. 
'' It is a way we have in our country-side/' said 
they. And a very becoming way it is. In Scot- 
land, where also you will get services for nothing, 
the good people reject your money as if you had 
been trying to corrupt a voter. When people take 
the trouble to do dignified acts, it is worth while 
to take a little more, and allow the dignity to be 
common to all concerned. But in our brave Saxon 
countries, where we plod threescore years and ten 
in the mud, and the wind keeps singing in our 



;^6 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

ears from birth to burial, we do our good and 
bad with a high hand and almost offensively; and 
make even our alms a witness-bearing and an act 
of war against the wrong. 

After Hautmont, the sun came forth again and 
the wind went down; and a little paddling took 
us beyond the iron works and through a delectable 
land. The river wound among low hills, so that 
sometimes the sun was at our backs and sometimes 
it stood right ahead, and the river before us was 
one sheet of intolerable glory. On either hand 
meadows and orchards bordered, with a margin 
of sedge and water flowers, upon the river. The 
hedges were of great height, woven about the 
trunks of hedgerow elms; and the fields, as they 
were often very small, looked like a series of 
bowers along the stream. There was never any 
prospect ; sometimes a hill-top with its trees would 
look over the nearest hedgerow, just to make a 
middle distance for the sky ; but that was all. The 
heaven was bare of clouds. The atmosphere, after 
the rain, was of enchanting purity. The river 
doubled among the hillocks, a shining strip of 



ON THE SAMBRE 37 

mirror glass; and the dip of the paddles set the 
flowers shaking- along the brink. 

In the meadows wandered black and white cattle 
fantastically marked. One beast, with a white head 
and the rest of the body glossy black, came to the 
edge to drink, and stood gravely twitching his ears 
at me as I went by, like some sort of preposterous 
clergyman in a play. A moment after I heard a 
loud plunge, and, turning my head, saw the clergy- 
man struggling to shore. The bank had given way 
under his feet. 

Besides the cattle, we saw no living things except 
a few birds and a great many fishermen. These 
sat along the edges of the meadows, sometimes 
with one rod, sometimes with as many as half a 
score. They seemed stupefied with contentment; 
and, when we induced them to exchange a few 
words with us about the weather, their voices 
sounded quiet and far away. There was a strange 
diversity of opinion among them as to the kind of 
fish for which they set their lures; although they 
were all agreed in this, that the river was abun- 
dantly supplied. Where it was plain that no two 



38 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

of them had ever caught the same kind of fish, we 
could not help suspecting that perhaps not any 
one of them had ever caught a hsh at all. I hope, 
since the afternoon was so lovely, that they were 
one and all rewarded ; and that a silver booty went 
home in every basket for the pot. Some of my 
friends would cry shame on me for this ; but I 
prefer a man, were he only an angler, to the bravest 
pair of gills in all God's waters. I do not affect 
fishes unless when cooked in sauce; whereas an 
angler is an important piece of river scenery, and 
hence deserves some recognition among canoeists. 
He can always tell you where you are, after a mild 
fashion ; and his quiet presence serves to accen- 
tuate the solitude and stillness, and remind you of 
the glittering citizens below your boat. 

The Sambre turned so industriously to and fro 
among his little hills that it was past six before 
we drew near the lock at Quartes. There were 
some children on the tow-path, with whom the 
Cigarette fell into a chaffing talk as they ran along 
beside us. It was in vain that I warned him. In 
vain I told him in English that boys were the most 



ONTHESAMBRE 39 

dangerous creatures; and if once you began with 
them, it was safe to end in a shower of stones. For 
my own part, whenever anything was addressed to 
me, I smiled gently and shook my head, as though 
I were an inoffensive person inadequately ac- 
quainted with French. For, indeed, I have had 
such an experience at home that I would sooner 
meet many wild animals than a troop of healthy 
urchins. 

But I was doing injustice to these peaceable 
young Hainaulters. When the Cigarette went off 
to make inquiries, I got out upon the bank to smoke 
a pipe and superintend the boats, and became at 
once the centre of much amiable curiosity. The 
children had been joined by this time by a young 
woman and a mild lad who had lost an arm; and 
this gave me more security. When I let slip my 
first word or so in French, a little girl nodded 
her head with a comical grown-up air. '' Ah, you 
see," she said, " he understands well enough now: 
he was just making believe." And the little group 
laughed together very good-naturedly. 

They were much impressed when they heard 



40 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

we came from England ; and the little girl prof- 
fered the information that England was an island 
'' and a far way from here — bien loin d'ici." 

*' Ay, you may say that, a far way from here," 
said the lad with one arm. 

I was nearly as homesick as ever I was in my 
life; they seemed to make it such an incalculable 
distance to the place where I first saw the day. 

They admired the canoes very much. And I 
observed one piece of delicacy in these children 
which is worthy of record. They had been deaf- 
ening us for the last hundred yards with petitions 
for a sail ; ay, and they deafened us to the same 
tune next morning when we came to start; but 
then, when the canoes were lying empty, there was 
no word of any such petition. Delicacy? or per- 
haps a bit of fear for the water in so crank a vessel ? 
I hate cynicism a great deal worse than I do the 
devil; unless perhaps, the two were the same 
thing? And yet 'tis a good tonic; the cold tub 
and bath-towel of the sentiments; and positively 
necessary to life in cases of advanced sensibility. 

From the boats they turned to my costume. 



ON THE SAMBRE 41 

They could not make enough of my red sash ; and 
my knife filled them with awe. 

" They make them like that in England," said 
the boy with one arm. I was glad he did not know 
how badly we make them in England nowadays. 
" They are for people who go away to sea/' he 
added, " and to defend one's life against great 
fish." 

I felt I was becoming a more and more romantic 
figure to the little group at every word. And so I 
suppose I was. Even my pipe, although it was an 
ordinary French clay, pretty well '' trousered," as 
they call it, would have a rarity in their eyes, as a 
thing coming from so far away. And if my 
feathers were not very fine in themselves, they 
were all from over seas. One thing in my outfit, 
however, tickled them out of all politeness; and 
that was the bemired condition of my canvas shoes. 
I suppose they were sure the mud at any rate was 
a home product. The little girl (who was the 
genius of the party) displayed her own sabots in 
competition; and I wish you could have seen how 
gracefully and merrily she did it. 



42 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

The young woman's milk-can, a great amphora 
of hammered brass, stood some way off upon the 
sward. I was glad of an opportunity to divert pub- 
lic attention from myself and return some of the 
compliments I had received. So I admired it cor- 
dially both for form and colour, telling them, and 
very truly, that it was as beautiful as gold. They 
were not surprised. The things were plainly the 
boast of the country-side. And the children ex- 
patiated on the costliness of these amphorae, which 
sell sometimes as high as thirty francs apiece: 
told me how they were carried on donkeys, one 
on either side of the saddle, a brave caparison 
in themselves; and how they were to be seen all 
over the district, and at the larger farms in great 
number and of great size. 



PONT-SUR-SAMBRE 

WE ARE PEDLARS 

THE Cigarette returned with good news. 
There were beds to be had some ten 
minutes' walk from where we were, at a 
place called Pont. We stowed the canoes in a 
granary, and asked among the children for a 
guide. The circle at once widened round us, 
and our offers of reward were received in dis- 
piriting silence. We were plainly a pair of 
Bluebeards to the children ; they might speak 
to us in public places, and where they had the 
advantage of numbers ; but it was another thing 
to venture off alone with two uncouth and 
legendary characters, who had dropped from the 
clouds upon their hamlet this quiet afternoon, 
sashed and beknived, and with a flavour of great 
voyages. The owner of the granary came to our 
assistance, singled out one little fellow, and 



44 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

threatened him with corporaUties ; or I suspect 
we should have had to find the way for ourseh'es. 
As it was, he was more frightened at the granary 
man than the strangers, having perhaps had some 
experience of the former. But I fancy his httle 
heart must have been going at a fine rate, for he 
kept trotting at a respectful distance in front, and 
looking back at us with scared eyes. Not other- 
wise may the children of the young world have 
guided Jove or one of his Olympian compeers on 
an adventure. 

A miry lane led us up from Quartes, with its 
church and bickering wind-mill. The hinds were 
trudging homewards from the fields. A brisk 
little old woman passed us by. She was seated 
across a donkey between a pair of glittering milk- 
cans, and, as she went, she kicked jauntily with 
her heels upon the donkey's side, and scattered 
shrill remarks among the wayfarers. It was not- 
able that none of the tired men took the trouble 
to reply. Our conductor soon led us out of the 
lane and across country. The sun had gone down, 
but the west in front of us was one lake of level 



PONT-SUR-SAMBRE 45 

gold. The path wandered awhile in the open, 
and then passed under a trellis like a bower in- 
definitely prolonged. On either hand were shad- 
owy orchards; cottages lay low among the leaves 
and sent their smoke to heaven; every here and 
there, in an opening, appeared the great gold 
face of the west. 

I never saw the Cigarette in such an idyllic 
frame of mind. He waxed positively lyrical in 
praise of country scenes. I was little less ex- 
hilarated myself; the mild air of the evening, 
the shadows, the rich lights, and the silence made 
a symphonious accompaniment about our walk; 
and we both determined to avoid towns for the 
future and sleep in hamlets. 

At last the path went between two houses, and 
turned the party out into a wide, muddy high- 
road, bordered, as far as the eye could reach on 
either hand, by an unsightly village. The houses 
stood well back, leaving a ribbon of waste land on 
either side of the road, where there were stacks 
of firewood, carts, barrows, rubbish heaps, and 
a little doubtful grass. Away on the left, a gaunt 



46 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

tower stood in the middle of the street. What 
it had been in past ages I know not : probably a 
hold in time of war; but nowadays it bore an 
illegible dial-plate in its upper parts, and near 
the bottom an iron letter-box. 

The inn to which we had been recommended 
at Quartes was full, or else the landlady did not 
like our looks. I ought to say, that with our long, 
damp india-rubber bags, we presented rather a 
doubtful type of civilisation : like rag-and-bone 
men, the Cigarette imagined. '' These gentlemen 
are pedlars ? — Ces messieurs sont des mar- 
chandsF " — asked the landlady. And then, with- 
out waiting for an answer, which I • suppose she 
thought superfluous in so plain a case, recom- 
mended us to a butcher who lived hard by the 
tower and took in travellers to lodge. 

Thither went we. But the butcher was flitting, 
and all his beds were taken down. Or else he 
did n't like our looks. As a parting shot, we had, 
*' These gentlemen are pedlars?" 

It began to grow dark in earnest. We could 
no longer distinguish the faces of the people who 



PONT-SUR-SAMBRE 47 

passed us by with an inarticulate good-evening. 
And the householders of Pont seemed very eco- 
nomical with their oil, for we saw not a single 
window lighted in all that long village. I believe 
it is the longest village in the world ; but I dare 
say in our predicament every pace counted three 
times over. We were much cast down when we 
came to the last auberge, and, looking in at the 
dark door, asked timidly if we could sleep there 
for the night. A female voice assented, in no 
very friendly tones. We clapped the bags down 
and found our way to chairs. 

The place was in total darkness, save a red 
glow in the chinks and ventilators of the stove. 
But now the landlady lit a lamp to see her new 
guests; I suppose the darkness was what saved us 
another expulsion, for I cannot say she looked 
gratified at our appearance. We were in a large, 
bare apartment, adorned with two allegorical 
prints of Music and Painting, and a copy of the 
Law against Public Drunkenness. On one side 
there was a bit of a bar, with some half-a-dozen 
bottles. Two labourers sat waiting supper, in at- 



48 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

titudes of extreme weariness; a plain-looking lass 
bustled about with a sleepy child of two, and the 
landlady began to derange the pots upon the stove 
and set some beefsteak to grill. 

" These gentlemen are pedlars ? " she asked 
sharply; and that was all the conversation forth- 
coming. We began to think we might be pedlars, 
after all. I never knew a population with so nar- 
row a range of conjecture as the innkeepers of 
Pont-sur-Sambre. But manners and bearing have 
not a wider currency than bank-notes. You have 
only to get far enough out of your beat, and all 
your accomplished airs will go for nothing. These 
Hainaulters could see no difference between us 
and the average pedlar. Indeed, we had some 
grounds for reflection while the steak was getting 
ready, to see how perfectly they accepted us at 
their own valuation, and how our best politeness 
and best efforts at entertainment seemed to fit 
quite suitably with the character of packmen. At 
least it seemed a good account of the profession 
in France, that even before such judges we could 
not beat them at our own weapons. 



PONT-SUR-SAMBRE 49 

At last we were called to table. The two 
hinds (and one of them looked sadly worn and 
white in the face, as though sick with over-work 
and under-feeding) supped off a single plate of 
some sort of bread-berry, some potatoes in their 
jackets, a small cup of coffee sweetened with sugar 
candy, and one tumbler of swipes. The landlady, 
her son, and the lass aforesaid took the same. 
Our meal was quite a banquet by comparison. We 
had some beefsteak, not so tender as it might have 
been, some of the potatoes, some cheese, an extra 
glass of the swipes, and white sugar in our coffee. 

You see what it is to be a gentleman, — I beg 
your pardon, what it is to be a pedlar. It had not 
before occurred to me that a pedlar was a great 
man in a labourer's alehouse; but now that I 
had to enact the part for the evening, I found 
that so it was. He has in his hedge quarters 
somewhat the same pre-eminency as the man who 
takes a private parlour in a hotel. The more you 
look into it the more infinite are the class dis- 
tinctions among men ; and possibly, by a happy 
dispensation there is no one at all at the bottom 



50 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

of the scale; no one but can find some superiority 
over somebody else, to keep up his pride withal. 

We were displeased enough with our fare. Par- 
ticularly the Cigarette; for I tried to make believe 
that I was amused with the adventure, tough beef- 
steak and all. According to the Lucretian maxim, 
our steak should have been flavoured by the look of 
the other people's bread-berry; but we did not 
find it so in practice. You may have a head 
knowledge that other people live more poorly 
than yourself, but it is not agreeable — I was 
going to say, it is against the etiquette of the 
universe — to sit at the same table and pick your 
own superior diet from among their crusts. I 
had not seen such a thing done since the greedy 
boy at school with his birthday cake. It was 
odious enough to witness, I could remember; and 
I had never thought to play the part myself. But 
there, again, you see what it is to be a pedlar. 

There is no doubt that the poorer classes in our 
country are much more charitably disposed than 
their superiors in wealth. And I fancy it must 
arise a great deal from the comparative indistinc- 



PONT-SUR-SAMBRE 51 

tion of the easy and the not so easy in these ranks. 
A workman or a pedlar cannot shutter himself 
off from his less comfortable neighbours. If he 
treats himself to a luxury, he must do it in the 
face of a dozen who cannot. And what should 
more directly lead to charitable thoughts? . . . 
Thus the poor man, camping out in life, sees it as 
it is, and knows that every mouthful he puts in 
his belly has been wrenched out of the fingers of 
the hungry. 

But at a certain stage of prosperity, as in a 
balloon ascent, the fortunate person passes through 
a zone of clouds, and sublunary matters are thence- 
forward hidden from his view. He sees nothing 
but the heavenly bodies, all in admirable order 
and positively as good as new. He finds himself 
surrounded in the most touching manner by the 
attentions of Providence, and compares himself 
involuntarily with the lilies and the skylarks. He 
does not precisely sing, of course; but then he 
looks so unassuming in his open Landau! If all 
the world dined at one table, this philosophy would 
meet with some rude knocks. 



PONT-SUR-SAMBRE 

THE TRAVELLING MERCHANT 

LIKE the lackeys in Moliere's farce, when 
i the true nobleman broke in on their high 
life below stairs, we were destined to be 
confronted with a real pedlar. To make the lesson 
still more poignant for fallen gentlemen like us, 
he was a pedlar of infinitely more consideration 
than the sort of scurvy fellows we were taken for; 
like a lion among mice, or a ship of war bearing 
dow^n upon two cock-boats. Indeed, he did not 
deserve the name of pedlar at all ; he was a trav- 
elling merchant. 

I suppose it was about half-past eight when 
this worthy. Monsieur Hector Gilliard, of Mau- 
beuge, turned up at the alehouse door in a tilt 
cart drawn by a donkey, and cried cheerily on 
the inhabitants. He was a lean, nervous flibber- 
tigibbet of a man, with something the look of an 



PONT-SUR-SAMBRE S3 

actor and something the look of a horse jockey. 
He had evidently prospered without any of the 
favours of education, for he adhered with stern sim- 
plicity to the masculine gender, and in the course 
of the evening passed off some fancy futures in 
a very florid style of architecture. With him 
came his wife, a comely young woman, with her 
hair tied in a yellow kerchief, and their son, a 
little fellow of four, in a blouse and military kepi. 
It was notable that the child was many degrees 
better dressed than either of the parents. We were 
informed he was already at a boarding-school ; but 
the holidays having just commenced, he was off 
to spend them with his parents on a cruise. An 
enchanting holiday occupation, was it not? to 
travel all day with father and mother in the tilt 
cart full of countless treasures ; the green country 
rattling by on either side, and the children in all 
the villages contemplating him with envy and 
wonder. It is better fun, during the holidays, to 
be the son of a travelling merchant, than son 
and heir to the greatest cotton spinner in cre- 
ation. And as for being a reigning prince, — 



54 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

indeed, I never saw one if it was not Master 
Gilliard ! 

While M. Hector and the son of the house were 
putting up the donkey and getting all the val- 
uables under lock and key, the landlady warmed 
up the remains of our beefsteak and fried the 
cold potatoes in slices, and Madame Gilliard set 
herself to waken the boy, who had come far 
that day, and was peevish and dazzled by the 
light. He was no sooner awake than he began 
to prepare himself for supper by eating ga- 
lette, unripe pears, and cold potatoes, with, so 
far as I could judge, positive benefit to his 
appetite. 

The landlady, fired with motherly emulation, 
awoke her own little girl, and the two children 
were confronted. Master Gilliard looked at her 
for a moment, very much as a dog looks at his 
own reflection in a mirror before he turns away. 
He was at that time absorbed in the galette. His 
mother seemed crestfallen that he should display 
so little inclination towards the other sex, and 
expressed her disappointment with some candour 



PONT-SUR-SAMBRE SS 

and a very proper reference to the influence of 
years. 

Sure enough a time will come when he will pay 
more attention to the girls, and think a great deal 
less of his mother; let us hope she will like it as 
well as she seemed to fancy. But it is odd enough ; 
the ver}^ women who profess most contempt for 
mankind as a sex seem to find even its ugliest par- 
ticulars rather lively and high-minded in their 
own sons. 

The little girl looked longer and with more in- 
terest, probably because she was in her own house, 
while he was a traveller and accustomed to strange 
sights. And, besides, there was no galette in the 
case with her. 

All the time of supper there was nothing spoken 
of but my young lord. The two parents were 
both absurdly fond of their child. Monsieur kept 
insisting on his sagacity; how he knew all the 
children at school by name, and when this utterly 
failed on trial, how he was cautious and exact to 
a strange degree, and if asked anything, he would 
sit and think — and think, and if he ditl not know 



S6 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

it, " my faith, he would n't tell you at all — ma 
foi, il ne vous le dira pas'' Which is certainly a 
very high degree of caution. At intervals, M. 
Hector would appeal to his wife, with his mouth 
full of beefsteak, as to the little fellow's age at 
such or such a time when he had said or done 
something memorable ; and I noticed that Madame 
usually poohpoohed these inquiries. She herself 
was not boastful in her vein; but she never had 
her fill of caressing the child; and she seemed to 
take a gentle pleasure in recalling all that was 
fortunate in his little existence. No school-boy 
could have talked more of the holidays which were 
just beginning and less of the black school-time 
which must inevitably follow after. She showed, 
with a pride perhaps partly mercantile in origin, 
his pockets preposterously swollen with tops, and 
whistles, and string. When she called at a house 
in the w^ay of business, it appeared he kept her 
company; and, whenever a sale was made, re- 
ceived a sou out of the profit. Indeed, they spoiled 
him vastly, these two good people. But they had 
an eye to his manners, for all that, and reproved 



PONT-SUR-SAMBRE 57 

him for some little faults in breeding which oc- 
curred from time to time during supper. 

On the whole, I was not much hurt at being 
taken for a pedlar. I might think that I ate with 
greater delicacy, or that my mistakes in French 
belonged to a different order; but it was plain 
that these distinctions would be thrown away upon 
the landlady and the two labourers. In all essen- 
tial things we and the Gilliards cut very much 
the same figure in the alehouse kitchen. M. Hector 
was more at home, indeed, and took a higher tone 
with the world; but that was explicable on the 
ground of his driving a donkey-cart, while we 
poor bodies tramped afoot. I dare say the rest 
of the company thought us dying with envy, 
though in no ill sense, to be as far up in the pro- 
fession as the new arrival. 

And of one thing I am sure; that every one 
thawed and became more humanised and con- 
versible as soon as these innocent people appeared 
upon the scene. I would not very readily trust 
the travelling merchant with any extravagant sum 
of money, but I am sure his heart was in the 



58 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

right place. In this mixed world, if you can find 
one or two sensible places in a man; above all, if 
you should find a whole family living together on 
such pleasant terms, you may surely be satisfied, 
and take the rest for granted; or, what is a 
great deal better, boldly make up your mind that 
you can do perfectly well without the rest, and that 
ten thousand bad traits cannot make a single good 
one any the less good. 

It was getting late. M. Hector lit a stable lan- 
tern and went off to his cart for some arrange- 
ments, and my young gentleman proceeded to 
divest himself of the better part of his raiment 
and play gymnastics on his mother's lap, and 
thence on to the floor, with accompaniment of 
laughter. 

"Are you going to sleep alone?" asked the 
servant lass. 

"There's little fear of that," says Master 
Gilliard. 

" You sleep alone at school," objected his 
mother. " Come, come, you must be a man." 

But he protested that school was a dilTerent 



PONT-SUR-SAMBRE 59 

matter from the holidays; that there were dor- 
mitories at school, and silenced the discussion with 
kisses, his mother smiling, no one better pleased 
than she. 

There certainly was, as he phrased it, very little 
fear that he should sleep alone, for there was but 
one bed for the trio. We, on our part, had firmly 
protested against one man's accommodation for 
two ; and we had a double-bedded pen in the loft 
of the house, furnished, beside the beds, w^ith ex- 
actly three hat pegs and one table. There was 
not so much as a glass of water. But the window 
would open, by good fortune. 

Some time before I fell asleep the loft was full 
of the sound of mighty snoring; the Gilliards, 
and the labourers, and the people of the inn, all 
at it, I suppose, with one consent. The young 
moon outside shone very clearly over Pont-sur- 
Samhrc, and down upon the alehouse where all 
we pedlars were abed. 



ON THE SAMBRE CANALISED 

TO LANDRECIES 

IN the morning, when we came down-stairs 
the landlady pointed out to us two pails of 
water behind the street door. " Voild de 
Veau pour vous debarbouillcr/' says she. And so 
there we made a shift to wash ourselves, while 
Madame Gilliard brushed the family boots on the 
outer doorstep, and M. Hector, whistling cheerily, 
arranged some small goods for the day's cam- 
paign in a portable chest of drawers, which formed 
a part of his baggage. Meanwhile the child 
was letting off Waterloo crackers all over the 
floor. 

I wonder, by the way, what they call Waterloo 
crackers in France; perhaps Austerlitz crackers. 
There is a great deal in the point of view. Do 
you remember the Frenchman who, travelling by 
way of Southampton, was put down in Waterloo 



ON THE SAMBRE 6i 

Station, and had to drive across Waterloo Bridge? 
He had a mind to go home again, it seems. 

Pont itself is on the river, but whereas it is ten 
minutes' walk from Ouartes by dry land, it is six 
weary kilometres by water. We left our bags at 
the inn and walked to our canoes through the wet 
orchards unencumbered. Some of the children 
were there to see us off, but we were no longer 
the mysterious beings of the night before. A de- 
parture is much less romantic than an unexplained 
arrival in the golden evening. Although we 
might be greatly taken at a ghost's first appear- 
ance, we should behold him vanish with compara- 
tive equanimity. 

The good folks of the inn at Pont, when we 
called there for the bags, were overcome with 
marvelling. At the sight of these two dainty little 
boats, with a fluttering union jack on each, and 
all the varnish shining from the sponge, they began 
to perceive that they had entertained angels un- 
awares. The landlady stood upon the bridge, 
probably lamenting she had charged so little; the 
son ran to and fro, and called out the neighbours 



62 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

to enjoy the sight; and we paddled away from 
quite a crowd of rapt observers. These gentlemen 
pedlars, indeed ! Now you see their quality too 
late. 

The whole day was showery, with occasional 
drenching plumps. We were soaked to the skin, 
then partially dried in the sun, then soaked once 
more. But there were some calm intervals, and 
one notably, when we were skirting the forest of 
Mormal, a sinister name to the ear, but a place 
most gratifying to sight and smell. It looked 
solemn along the river-side, drooping its boughs 
into the water, and piling them up aloft into a 
wall of leaves. What is a forest but a city of 
nature's own, full of hardy and innocuous living 
things, where there is nothing dead and nothing 
made with the hands, but the citizens themselves 
are the houses and public monuments? There is 
nothing so much alive and yet so quiet as a wood- 
land ; and a pair of people, swinging past in 
canoes, feel very small and bustling by comparison. 

And, surely, of all smells in the world the 
smell of many trees is the sweetest and most for- 



ONTHESAMBRE 63 

tifying. The sea has a rude pistolling sort of 
odour, that takes you in the nostrils like snuff, 
and carries with it a fine sentiment of open water 
and tall ships; but the smell of a forest, which 
comes nearest to this in tonic quality, surpasses 
it Hy many degrees in the quality of softness. 
Again, the smell of the sea has little variety, but 
the smell of a forest is infinitely changeful; it 
varies with the hour of the day, not in strength 
merely, but in character ; and the different sorts of 
trees, as you go from one zone of the wood to 
another, seem to live among different kinds of 
atmosphere. Usually the rosin of the fir predom- 
inates. But some woods are more coquettish in 
their habits; and the breath of the forest Mormal, 
as it came aboard upon us that showery after- 
noon, was perfumed with nothing less delicate 
than sweetbrier. 

I wish our way had always lain among woods. 
Trees are the most civil society. An old oak 
that has been growing where he stands since be- 
fore the Reformation, taller than many spires, 
more stately than the greater part of mountains, 



64 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

and yet a living thing, liable to sicknesses and 
death, like you and me : is not that in itself a 
speaking lesson in history? But acres on acres 
full of such patriarchs contiguously rooted, their 
green tops billowing in the wind, their stalwart 
younglings pushing up about their knees ; a whole 
forest, healthy and beautiful, giving colour to the 
light, giving perfume to the air; what is this but 
the most imposing piece in nature's repertory? 
Heine wished to lie like Merlin under the oaks 
of Broceliande. I should not be satisfied with 
one tree; but if the wood grew together like a 
banyan grove, I would be buried under the tap- 
root of the whole; my parts should circulate from 
oak to oak; and my consciousness should be dif- 
fused abroad in all the forest, and give a common 
heart to that assembly of green spires, so that it, 
also, might rejoice in its own loveliness and dig- 
nity. I think I feel a thousand squirrels leaping 
from bough to bough in my vast mausoleum ; 
and the birds and the winds merrily coursing over 
its vmeven, leafy surface. 

Alas! the forest of Mormal is only a little bit 



ON THE SAMBRE 6s 

of a wood, and it was but for a little way that we 
skirted by its boundaries. And the rest of the time 
the rain kept coming in squirts and the wind in 
squalls, until one's heart grew weary of such fit- 
ful, scolding weather. It was odd how the showers 
began w^hen we had to carry the boats over a lock 
and must expose our legs. They always did. This 
is a sort of thing that readily begets a personal 
feeling against nature. There seems no reason 
why the shower should not come five minutes be- 
fore or five m.inutes after, unless you suppose an 
intention to affront you. The Cigarette had a 
mackintosh which put him more or less above 
these contrarieties. But I had to bear the brunt 
uncovered. I began to remember that nature was 
a woman. My companion, in a rosier temper, 
listened with great satisfaction to my jeremiads, 
and ironically concurred. He instanced, as a cog- 
nate matter, the action of the tides, " which," said 
he, " was altogether designed for the confusion 
of canoeists, except in so far as it was calculated 
to minister to a barren vanity on the part of the 

moon." 

5 



66 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

At the last lock, some little way out of Landre- 
cies, I refused to go any farther; and sat in a 
drift of rain by the side of the bank, to have a 
reviving pipe. A vivacious old man, whom I took 
to have been the devil, drew near, and questioned 
me about our journey. In the fulness of my heart 
I laid bare our plans before him. He said it was 
the silliest enterprise that ever he heard of. Why, 
did I not know, he asked me, that it was nothing 
but locks, locks, locks, the whole way? not to 
mention that, at this season of the year, we would 
find the Oise quite dry? "Get into a train, my 
little young man," said he, " and go you away 
home to your parents." I was so astounded at 
the man's malice that I could only stare at him in 
silence. A tree would never have spoken to me 
like this. At last I got out with some words. 
We had come from Antwerp already, I told him, 
which was a good long way; and we should do 
the rest in spite of him. Yes, I said, if there 
were no other reason, I would do it now, just be- 
cause he had dared to say we could not. The 
pleasant old gentleman looked at me sneeringly, 



ON THE SAMBRE 67 

made an allusion to my canoe, and marched off, 
wagging his head. 

I was still inwardly fuming when up came a 
pair of young fellows, who imagined I was the 
Cigarette's servant, on a comparison, I suppose, 
of my bare jersey with the other's mackintosh, 
and asked me many questions about my place and 
my master's character. I said he was a good 
enough fellow, but had this absurd voyage on the 
head. - Oh, no, no," said one, " you must not 
say that; it is not absurd; it is very courageous of 
him." I believe these were a couple of angels sent 
to give me heart again. It was truly fortifying 
to reproduce all the old man's insinuations, as 
if they were original to me in my character of a 
malcontent footman, and have them brushed away 
like so many flies by these admirable young men. 

When I recounted this affair to the Cigarette, 
" They must have a curious idea of how English 
servants behave," says he, drily, " for you treated 
me like a brute beast at the lock." 

I was a good deal mortified ; but my temper had 
suffered, it is a fact. 



AT LANDRECIES 

AT Landrecies the rain still fell and the 
/~A wind still blew; but we found a double- 
bedded room with plenty of furniture, 
real water- jugs with real water in them, and 
dinner, a real dinner, not innocent of real wine. 
After having been a pedlar for one night, and 
a butt for the elements during the whole of the 
next day, these comfortable circumstances fell on 
my heart like sunshine. There was an English 
fruiterer at dinner, travelling with a Belgian 
fruiterer; in the evening at the cafe we watched 
our compatriot drop a good deal of money at 
corks, and I don't know why, but this pleased us. 
It turned out that we were to see more of 
Landrecies than we expected ; for the weather next 
day was simply bedlamite. It is not the place one 
would have chosen for a day's rest, for it consists 
almost entirely of fortifications. Within the ram- 



AT LANDRECIES 69 

parts, a few blocks of houses, a long row of bar- 
racks, and a church figure, with what countenance 
they may, as the town. There seems to be no 
trade, and a shop-keeper from whom I bought a 
sixpenny flint and steel was so much affected that 
he filled my pockets with spare flints into the 
bargain. The only public buildings that had any 
interest for us were the hotel and the cafe. But 
we visited the church. There lies Marshal Clarke. 
But as neither of us had ever heard of that mili- 
tary hero, we bore the associations of the spot 
with fortitude. 

In all garrison towns, guard-calls, and reveilles, 
and such like, make a fine, romantic interlude in 
civic business. Bugles, and drums, and fifes are 
of themselves most excellent things in nature, and 
when they carry the mind to marching armies 
and the picturesque vicissitudes of war they stir 
up something proud in the heart. But in a shadow 
of a town like Landrecies, with little else moving, 
these points of war made a proportionate commo- 
tion. Indeed, they were the only things to re- 
member. It was just the place to hear the round 



70 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

going by at night in the darkness, with the sohd 
tramp of men marching, and the starthng rever- 
l:)erations of the drum. It reminded you that even 
this place was a point in the great warfaring 
system of Europe, and might on some future day 
be ringed about with cannon smoke and thunder, 
and make itself a name among strong towns. 

The drum, at any rate, from its martial voice 
and notable physiological effect, nay, even from 
its cumbrous and comical shape, stands alone 
among the instruments of noise. And if it be 
true, as I have heard it said, that drums are covered 
with asses' skin, what a picturesque irony is there 
in that! As if this long-suffering animal's hide 
had not been sufficiently belaboured during life, 
now by Lyonnese costermongers, now by presump- 
tuous Hebrew prophets, it must be stripped from 
his poor hinder quarters after death, stretched on 
a drum, and beaten night after night round the 
streets of every garrison town in Europe. And 
up the heights of Alma and Spicheren, and wher- 
ever death has his red flag a-flying, and sounds 
his own potent tuck upon the cannons, there also 



AT LANDRECIES 71 

must the drummer boy, hurrying with white 
face over fallen comrades, batter and bemaul 
this slip of skin from the loins of peaceable 
donkeys. 

Generally a man is never more uselessly em- 
ployed than when he is at this trick of bastinado- 
ing asses' hide. We know what effect it has in 
life, and how your dull ass will not mend his pace 
with beating. But in this state of mummy and 
melancholy survival of itself, when the hollow skin 
reverberates to the drummer's wrist, and each dub- 
a-dub goes direct to a man's heart, and puts mad- 
ness there, and that disposition of the pulses which 
we, in our big way of talking, nickname Heroism, 
— is there not something in the nature of a re- 
venge upon the donkey's persecutors? Of old, he 
might say, you drubbed me up hill and down dale 
and I must endure ; but now that I am dead those 
dull thwacks that were scarcely audible in coun- 
try lanes have become stirring music in front of 
the brigade, and for every blow that you lay on 
my old great-coat, you will see a comrade stumble 
and fall. 



72 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

Not long after the drums had passed the cafe, 
the Cigarette and the Arethiisa began to grow 
sleepy, and set out for the hotel, which was only 
a door or two aw^ay. But although we had been 
somewhat indifferent to Landrecies, Landrecies had 
not been indifferent to us. All day, we learned, 
people had been running out between the squalls 
to visit our two boats. Hundreds of persons, so 
said report, although it fitted ill with our idea of 
the town, — hundreds of persons had inspected 
them where they lay in a coal-shed. We were 
becoming lions in Landrecies, who had been only 
pedlars the night before in Pont. 

And now, when we left the cafe, we were pur- 
sued and overtaken at the hotel door by no less 
a person than the Juge de Paix ; a functionary, as 
far as I can make out, of the character of a 
Scotch Sheriff Substitute. He gave us his card 
and invited us to sup with him on the spot, very 
neatly, very gracefully, as Frenchmen can do these 
things. It was for the credit of Landrecies, said 
he; and although we knew very well how little 
credit we could do the place, we must have been 



AT LANDRECIES 73 

churlish fellows to refuse an invitation so politely 
introduced. 

The house of the judge was close by; it was 
a well-appointed bachelor's establishment, with a 
curious collection of old brass warming-pans upon 
the walls. Some of these were most elaborately 
carved. It seemed a picturesque idea for a col- 
lector. You could not help thinking how many 
nightcaps had wagged over these warming-pans 
in past generations; what jests may have been 
made and kisses taken while they were in service; 
and how often they had been uselessly paraded 
in the bed of death. If they could only speak, 
at what absurd, indecorous, and tragical scenes 
had they not been present? 

The wine was excellent. When we made the 
judge our compliments upon a bottle, "I do not 
give it you as my worst," said he. I wonder 
when Englishmen will learn these hospitable 
graces. They are worth learning; they set off 
life and make ordinary moments ornamental. 

There were two other Landrecienses present. 
One was the collector of something or other, I 



74 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

forget what; the other, we were told, was the 
principal notary of the place. So it happened 
that we all five more or less followed the law. 
At this rate, the talk w^as pretty certain to become 
technical. The Cigarette expounded the poor laws 
very magisterially. And a little later I found my- 
self laying down the Scotch law of illegitimacy, 
of which I am glad to say I know nothing. The 
collector and the notary, who wxre both married 
men, accused the judge, who was a bachelor, of 
having started the subject. He deprecated the 
charge, with a conscious, pleased air, just like all 
the men I have ever seen, be they French or 
English. How strange that we should all, in our 
unguarded moments, rather like to be thought a 
bit of a rogue with the women! 

As the evening went on the wine grew more 
to my taste; the spirits proved better than the 
wine; the company was genial. This was the 
highest water mark of popular favour on the 
whole cruise. After all, being in a judge's house, 
was there not something semi-official in the 
tribute? And so, remembering what a great 



AT LANDRECIES 75 

country France is, we did full justice to our en- 
tertainment. Landrecies had been a long while 
asleep before we returned to the hotel; and the 
sentries on the ramparts were already looking for 
daybreak. 



SAMBRE AND OISE CANAL 

CANAL BOATS 

NEXT day we made a late start in the 
rain. The judge pohtely escorted us to 
the end of the lock under an umbrella. 
We had now brought ourselves to a pitch of 
humility, in the matter of weather, not often at- 
tained except in the Scotch Highlands. A rag 
of blue sky or a glimpse of sunshine set our hearts 
singing; and when the rain was not heavy we 
counted the day almost fair. 

Long lines of barges lay one after another along 
the canal, many of them looking mighty spruce 
and shipshape in their jerkin of Archangel tar 
picked out with white and green. Some carried 
gay iron railings and quite a parterre of flower- 
pots. Children played on the decks, as heedless 
of the rain as if they had been brought up on 
Loch Caron side; men fished over the gunwale, 



SAMBRE AND OlSE 77 

some of them under umbrellas; women did their 
washing; and every barge boasted its mongrel 
cur by way of watch-dog. Each one barked furi- 
ously at the canoes, running alongside until he 
had got to the end of his own ship, and so pass- 
ing on the word to the dog aboard the next. 
We must have seen something like a hundred 
of these embarkations in the course of that 
day's paddle, ranged one after another like the 
houses in a street; and from not one of them 
were we disappointed of this accompaniment. 
It was like visiting a menagerie, the Cigarette 
remarked. 

These little cities by the canal-side had a very 
odd effect upon the mind. They seemed, with 
their flower-pots and smoking chimneys, their 
washings and dinners, a rooted piece of nature 
in the scene; and yet if only the canal below 
were to open, one junk after another would hoist 
sail or harness horses and swim away into all 
parts of France ; and the impromptu hamlet would 
separate, house by house, to the four winds. The 
children who played together to-day by the Sambre 



78 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

and Oise Canal, each at his own father's thresh- 
old, when and where might they next meet? 

For some time past the subject of barges had 
occupied a great deal of our talk, and we had 
projected an old age on the canals of Europe. 
It was to be the most leisurely of progresses, now 
on a swift river at the tail of a steamboat, now 
waiting horses for days together on some incon- 
siderable junction. We should be seen pottering 
on deck in all the dignity of years, our white 
beards falling into our laps. We were ever to 
be busied among paint-pots, so that there should 
be no white fresher and no green more emerald 
than ours, in all the navy of the canals. There 
should be books in the cabin, and tobacco jars, 
and some old Burgundy as red as a November 
sunset and as odorous as a violet in April. There 
should be a flageolet whence the Cigarette, with 
cunning touch, should draw melting music under 
the stars; or perhaps, laying that aside, upraise 
his voice — somewhat thinner than of yore, and 
with here and there a quaver, or call it a natural 
grace note — in rich and solemn psalmody. 



SAMBRE AND OISE 79 

All this simmering in my mind set me wishing 
to go aboard one of these ideal houses of loung- 
ing". I had plenty to choose from, as I coasted 
one after another and the dogs bayed at me for 
a vagrant. At last I saw a nice old man and his 
wife looking at me with some interest, so I gave 
them good-day and pulled up alongside. I began 
with a remark upon their dog, which had some- 
what the look of a pointer; thence I slid into a 
compliment on Madame's flowers, and thence into 
a word in praise of their way of life. 

If you ventured on such an experiment in Eng- 
land you would get a slap in the face at once. 
The life would be shown to be a vile one, not 
without a side shot at your better fortune. Now, 
what I like so much in France is the clear, un- 
flinching recognition by everybody of his own 
luck. They all know on which side their bread 
is buttered, and take a pleasure in showing it to 
others, which is surely the better part of religion. 
And they scorn to make a poor mouth over their 
poverty, which I take to be the better part of 
manliness. I have heard a woman in quite a 



8o AN INLAND VOYAGE 

better position at home, with a good bit of money 
in hand, refer to her own child with a horrid 
whine as " a poor man's child." I would not 
say such a thing to the Duke of Westminster. 
And the French are full of this spirit of inde- 
pendence. Perhaps it is the result of republican 
institutions, as they call them. Much more likely 
it is because there are so few people really poor 
that the whiners are not enough to keep each 
other in countenance. 

The people on the barge were delighted to hear 
that I admired their state. They understood per- 
fectly well, they told me, how Monsieur envied 
them. Without doubt Monsieur was rich, and in 
that case he might make a canal boat as pretty 
as a villa — joli comnic iin chateau. And with 
that they invited me on board their own water 
villa. They apologised for their cabin; they had 
not been rich enough to make it as it ought 
to be. 

" The fire should have been here, at this side," 
explained the husband. '' Then one might have 
a writing-table in the middle — books — and " 



SAMBRE AND OISE 8i 

(comprehensively) " all. It would be quite coquet- 
tisli — ca scrait toiit-a-fait coquet J' And he looked 
about him as thoiiin^-h the improvements were al- 
ready made. It was plainly not the first time that 
he had thus beautified his cabin in imagination; 
and when next he makes a hit, I should expect 
to see the writing-table in the middle. 

Madame had three birds in a cage. They were 
no great thing, she explained. Fine birds were so 
dear. They had sought to get a Hollandais last 
winter in Rouen ( Rouen, thought I ; and is this 
whole mansion, with its dogs, and birds, and smok- 
ing chimneys, so far a traveller as that, and as 
homely an object among the cliffs and orchards 
of the Seine as on the green plains of Sambre?) 
— they had sought to get a Hollandais last winter 
in Rouen ; but these cost fifteen francs apiece — 
picture it — fifteen francs ! 

" Pour tin tout petit oiseau — For quite a little 
bird," added the husband. 

As I continued to admire, the apologetics died 
away, and the good people began to brag of their 
barge and their happy condition in life, as if they 



82 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

had been Emperor and Empress of the Indies. It 
was, in the Scotch phrase, a good hearing, and 
put me in good-humour with the world. If people 
knew what an inspiriting thing it is to hear a man 
boasting, so long as he boasts of what he really 
has, I believe they would do it more freely and 
with a better grace. 

They began to ask about our voyage. You 
should have seen how they sympathised. They 
seemed half ready to give up their barge and 
follow us. But these canaletti are only gipsies 
semi-domesticated. The semi-domestication came 
out in rather a pretty form. Suddenly Madame's 
brow darkened. " Cependant," she began, and 
then stopped; and then began again by asking 
me if I were single. 

" Yes," said L 

" And your friend who went by just now ? " 

He also was unmarried. 

Oh, then, all was well. She could not have 
wives left alone at home; but since there were 
no wives in the question, we were doing the best 
we could. 



SAMBRE AND OISE 83 

*' To see about one in the world," said the 
husband, '' // ny a que ga — there is nothing else 
worth while. A man, look you, who sticks in his 
own village like a bear," he went on, " very well, 
he sees nothing. Aad then death is the end of 
all. And he has seen nothing." 

Madame reminded her husband of an English- 
man who had come up this canal in a steamer. 

" Perhaps Mr. Moens in the Ytcne/' I suggested. 

" That 's it," assented the husband. " He had 
his wife and family with him, and servants. He 
came ashore at all the locks and asked the name 
of the villages, whether from boatmen or lock- 
keepers; and then he wrote, wrote them down. 
Oh, he wrote enormously! I suppose it was a 
wager." 

A wager was a common enough explanation for 
our own exploits, but it seemed an original reason 
for taking notes. 



THE OISE IN FLOOD 

BEFORE nine next morning the two canoes 
I were installed on a light country cart at 
Etrenx; and we were soon following them 
along the side of a pleasant valley full of hop- 
gardens and poplars. Agreeable villages lay here 
and there on the slope of the hill : notably, Tu- 
pigny, with the hop-poles hanging their garlands 
in the very street, and the houses clustered with 
grapes. There was a faint enthusiasm on our 
passage; weavers put their heads to the windows; 
children cried out in ecstasy at sight of the two 
" boaties " — harqucttcs; and bloused pedestrians, 
who were acquainted with our charioteer, jested 
with him on the nature of his freight. 

We had a shower or two, but light and flying. 
The air was clean and sweet among all these 
green fields and green things growing. There 
was not a touch of autumn in the weather. And 



THE OISE IN FLOOD 85 

when, at Vadencourt, we launched from a little • 
lawn opposite a mill, the sun broke forth and set 
all the leaves shining in the valley of the Oise. 

The river was swollen with the long rains. 
From Vadencourt all the way to Origny it ran 
with ever-quickening speed, taking fresh heart at 
each mile, and racing as though it already smelt 
the sea. The water was yellow and turbulent, 
swung with an angry eddy among half -submerged 
willows, and made an angry clatter along stony 
shores. The course kept turning and turning in 
a narrow and well-timbered valley. Now the 
river would approach the side, and run gliding 
along the chalky base of the hill, and show us a 
few open colza fields among the trees. Now it 
would skirt the garden-walls of houses, where we 
might catch a glimpse through a doorway, and 
see a priest pacing in the checkered sunlight. 
Again, the foliage closed so thickly in front that 
there seemed to be no issue; only a thicket of 
willows overtopped by elms and poplars, under 
which the river ran flush and fleet, and where a 
kingfisher flew past like a piece of the blue sky. 



86 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

On these different manifestations the sun poured 
its clear and cathohc looks. The shadows lay as 
solid on the swift surface of the stream as on the 
stable meadows. The light sparkled golden in the 
dancing poplar leaves, and brought the hills into 
communion with our eyes. And all the while the 
river never stopped running or took breath; and 
the reeds along the whole valley stood shivering 
from top to toe. 

There should be some myth (but if there is, I 
know it not) founded on the shivering of the 
reeds. There are not many things in nature more 
striking to man's eye. It is such an eloquent 
pantomime of terror; and to see such a number 
of terrified creatures taking sanctuary in every 
nook along the shore is enough to infect a silly 
human with alarm. Perhaps they are only acold, 
and no wonder, standing waist deep in the stream. 
Or, perhaps, they have never got accustomed to 
the speed and fury of the river's flux, or the 
miracle of its continuous body. Pan once played 
upon their forefathers ; and so, by the hands of 
his river, he still plays upon these later generations 



THE OISE IN FLOOD 87 

down all the valley of the Gise; and plays the 
same air, both sweet and shrill, to tell us of the 
beauty and the terror of the world. 

The canoe was like a leaf in the current. It took 
it up and shook it, and carried it masterfully away, 
like a Centaur carrying off a nymph. To keep 
some command on our direction required hard and 
diligent plying of the paddle. The river was in 
such a hurry for the sea! Every drop of water 
ran in a panic, like so many people in a frightened 
crowd. But Avhat crowd was ever so numerous or 
so single-minded? All the objects of sight went by 
at a dance measure; the eyesight raced with the 
racing river; the exigencies of every moment kept 
the pegs screwed so tight that our being quivered 
like a well-tuned instrument, and the blood shook 
off its lethargy, and trotted through all the high- 
ways and byways of the veins and arteries, and in 
and out of the heart, as if circulation were but a 
holiday journey and not the daily moil of three- 
score years and ten. The reeds might nod their 
heads in warning, and with tremulous gestures 
tell how the river was as cruel as it was strong and 



88 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

cold, and how death lurked in the eddy underneath 
the willows. But the reeds had to stand where 
they were; and those who stand still are always 
timid advisers. As for us, we could have shouted 
aloud. If this lively and beautiful river were, in- 
deed, a thing of death's contrivance, the old ashen 
rogue had famously outwitted himself with us. I 
was living three to the minute. I was scoring 
points against him every stroke of my paddle, 
every turn of the stream. I have rarely had bet- 
ter profit of my life. 

For I think we may look upon our little private 
war with death somewhat in this light. If a man 
knows he will sooner or later be robbed upon a 
journey, he will have a bottle of the best in every 
inn, and look upon all his extravagances as so much 
gained upon the thieves. And above all, where, 
instead of simply spending, he makes a profitable 
investment for some of his money, when it will be 
out of risk of loss. So every bit of brisk living, 
and above all when it is healthful, is just so much 
gained upon the wholesale filcher, death. We shall 
have the less in our pockets, the more in our 



THE OISE IN FLOOD 89 

stomachs, when he cries. Stand and deliver. A 
swift stream is a favourite artifice of his, and 
one that brings him in a comfortable thing per 
annum; but when he and I come to settle our 
accounts I shall whistle in his face for these hours 
upon the upper Oise. 

Towards afternoon we got fairly drunken with 
the sunshine and the exhilaration of the pace. 
We could no longer contain ourselves and our 
content. The canoes were too small for us; we 
must be out and stretch ourselves on shore. And 
so in a green meadow we bestowed our limbs on 
the grass, and smoked deifying tobacco, and pro- 
claimed the world excellent. It was the last good 
hour of the day, and I dwell upon it with extreme 
complacency. 

On one side of the valley, high upon the chalky 
summit of the hill, a ploughman with his team 
appeared and disappeared at regular intervals. 
At each revelation he stood still for a few seconds 
against the sky, for all the world (as the Cigarette 
declared) like a foy Burns who had just ploughed 
up the Mountain' Daisy. He was the only living 



90 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

thing within view, unless we are to count the 
river. 

On the other side of the valley a group of red 
roofs and a belfry showed among the foliage. 
Thence some inspired bell-ringer made the after- 
noon musical on a chime of bells. There was 
something very sweet and taking in the air he 
played, and we thought we had never heard bells 
speak so intelligibly or sing so melodiously as 
these. It must have been to some such measure 
that the spinners and the young maids sang, 
" Come away, Death," in the Shakespearian 
Illyria. There is so often a threatening note, 
something blatant and metallic, in the voice of 
bells, that I believe we have fully more pain than 
pleasure from hearing them; but these, as they 
sounded abroad, now high, now low, now with a 
plaintive cadence that caught the ear like the bur- 
den of a popular song, were always moderate and 
tunable, and seemed to fall in with the spirit of 
still, rustic places, like the noise of a waterfall 
or the babble of a rookery in spring. I could 
have asked the bell-ringer for his blessing, good, 



THE OISE IN FLOOD 91 

sedate old man, who swung the rope so gently 
to the time of his meditations. I could have 
blessed the priest or the heritors, or whoever may 
be concerned with such affairs in France, who 
had left these sweet old bells to gladden the after- 
noon, and not held meetings, and made collections, 
and had their names repeatedly printed in the 
local paper, to rig up a peal of brand-new, brazen, 
Birmingham-hearted substitutes, who should bom- 
bard their sides to the provocation of a brand-new 
bell-ringer, and fill the echoes of the valley with 
terror and riot. 

At last the bells ceased, and with their note 
the sun withdrew. The piece was at an end; 
shadow and silence possessed the valley of the 
Oise. We took to the paddle with glad hearts, 
like people who have sat out a noble performance 
and return to work. The river was more dan- 
gerous here; it ran swifter, the eddies were more 
sudden and violent. All the way down we had had 
our fill of difficulties. Sometimes it was a weir 
which could be shot, sometimes one so shallow and 
full of stakes that we must withdraw the boats 



92 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

from the water and carry them round. But the 
chief sort of obstacle was a consequence of the 
late high winds. Every two or three hundred 
yards a tree had fallen across the river, and usually 
involved more than another in its fall. Often 
there was free water at the end, and we could 
steer round the leafy promontory and hear the 
water sucking and bubbling among the twigs. 
Often, again, when the tree reached from bank 
to bank, there was room, by lying close, to shoot 
through underneath, canoe and all. Sometimes 
it was necessary to get out upon the trunk itself 
and pull the boats across; and sometimes, where 
the stream was too impetuous for this, there was 
nothing for it but to land and " carry over." This 
made a fine series of accidents in the day's career, 
and kept us aware of ourselves. 

Shortly after our re-embarkation, while I was 
leading by a long way, and still full of a noble, 
exulting spirit in honour of the sun, the swift 
pace, and the church bells, the river made one of 
its leonine pounces round a corner, and I was 
aware of another fallen tree within a stone-cast. 



THE OISE IN FLOOD 93 

I had my back-board down in a trice, and aimed 
for a place where the trunk seemed high enough 
above the water, and the branches not too thick 
to let me slip below. When a man has just vowed 
eternal brotherhood with the universe he is not in 
a temper to take great determinations coolly, and 
this, which might have been a very important 
determination for me, had not been taken under a 
happy star. The tree caught me about the chest, 
and while I was yet struggling to make less of 
myself and get through, the river took the matter 
out of my hands and bereaved me of my boat. 
The Arethiisa swung round broadside on, leaned 
over, ejected so much of me as still remained on 
board, and, thus disencumbered, whipped under 
the tree, righted, and went merrily away down 
stream. 

I do not know how long it was before I scram- 
bled on to the tree to which I was left clinging, 
but it was longer than I cared about. My thoughts 
were of a grave and almost sombre character, but 
I still clung to my paddle. The stream ran away 
with my heels as fast as I could pull up my shoul- 



94 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

ders, and I seemed, by the weight, to have all the 
water of the Oise in my trousers' pockets. You 
can never know, till you try it, what a dead pull 
a river makes against a man. Death himself had 
me by the heels, for this was his last ambuscade, 
and he must now join personally in the fray. And 
still I held to my paddle. At last I dragged 
myself on to my stomach on the trunk, and lay 
there a breathless sop, with a mingled sense 
of humour and injustice. A poor figure I must 
have presented to Burns upon the hill-top 
with his team. But there was the paddle in my 
hand. On my tomb, if ever I have one, I mean 
to get these words inscribed : '' He clung to his 
paddle." 

The Cigarette had gone past awhile before ; for, 
as I might have observed, if I had been a little less 
pleased with the universe at the moment, there was 
a clear way round the tree-top at the farther side. 
He had offered his services to haul me out, but, 
as I was then already on my elbows, I had de- 
clined and sent him down stream after the truant 
Arethnsa. The stream was too rapid for a man to 



THE OISE IN FLOOD 95 

mount with one canoe, let alone two, upon his 
hands. So I crawled along the trunk to shore, 
and proceeded down the meadows by the river- 
side. I was so cold that my heart was sore. I had 
now an idea of my own why the reeds so bitterly 
shivered. I could have given any of them a 
lesson. The Cigarette remarked, facetiously, that 
he thought I was " taking exercise " as I drew 
near, until he made out for certain that I was only 
twittering with cold. I had a rub-down with a 
towel, and donned a dry suit from the india- 
rubber bag. But I was not my own man again 
for the rest of the voyage. I had a queasy 
sense that I wore my last dry clothes upon my 
body. The struggle had tired me; and, perhaps, 
whether I knew it or not, I was a little dashed 
in spirit. The devouring element in the universe 
had leaped out against me, in this green valley 
quickened by a running stream. The bells were 
all very pretty in their way, but I had heard 
some of the hollow notes of Pan's music. Would 
the wicked river drag me down by the heels, 
indeed? and look so beautiful all the time? 



^6 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

Nature's good-humour was only skin deep, after 
all. 

There was still a long way to go by the winding 
course of the stream, and darkness had fallen, and 
a late bell was ringing in Origny Sainte-Benoite 
when we arrived. 



ORIGNY SAINTE-BENOITE 

A BY-DAY 

THE next day was Sunday, and the church 
bells had little rest; mdeed, I do not 
think I remember anywhere else so great 
a choice of services as were here offered to the 
devout. And while the bells made merry in the 
sunshine, all the world with his dog was out shoot- 
ing among the beets and colza. 

In the morning a hawker and his wife went 
down the street at a foot-pace, singing to a very 
slow, lamentable music, '' O France, mes amours." 
It brought everybody to the door; and when our 
landlady called in the man to buy the words, he 
had not a copy of them left. She was not the first 
nor the second who had been taken with the song. 
There is something very pathetic in the love of 
the French people, since the war, for dismal 
patriotic music-making. I have watched a forester 



98 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

from Alsace while some one was singing '' Les 
malhciirs de la France,'' at a baptismal party in 
the neighbourhood of Fontainebleau. He arose 
from the table and took his son aside, close by 
where I was standing. '' Listen, listen," he said, 
bearing on the boy's shoulder, '' and remember 
this, my son." A little after he went out into the 
garden suddenly, and I could hear him sobbing 
in the darkness. 

The humiliation of their arms and the loss of 
Alsace and Lorraine made a sore pull on the 
endurance of this sensitive people ; and their hearts 
are still hot, not so much against Germany as 
against the Empire. In what other country will 
you find a patriotic ditty bring all the world into 
the street? But affliction heightens love; and we 
shall never know we are Englishmen until we have 
lost India. Independent America is still the cross 
of my existence; I cannot think of Farmer 
George without abhorrence; and I never feel 
more warmly to my own land than when I see 
the stars and stripes, and remember what our 
empire might have been. 

•V lo .J 



O R I G N Y 99 

The hawker's Httle book, which I purchased, 
w^as a curious mixture. Side by side with the 
flippant, rowdy nonsense of the Paris music-halls 
there were many pastoral pieces, not without a 
touch of poetry, I thought, and instinct with the 
brave independence of the poorer class in France. 
There you might read how the wood-cutter gloried 
in his axe, and the gardener scorned to be ashamed 
of his spade. It was not very well written, this 
poetry of labor, but the pluck of the sentiment 
redeemed what was weak or wordy in the expres- 
sion. The martial and the patriotic pieces, on 
the other hand, were tearful, womanish produc- 
tions one and all. The poet had passed under the 
Caudine Forks; he sang for an army visiting the 
tomb of its old renown, w^ith arms reversed ; and 
sang not of victory, but of death. There was a 
number in the hawker's collection called Conscrits 
Frangais, which may rank among the most dissua- 
sive war-lyrics on record. It would not be pos- 
sible to fight at all in such a spirit. The bravest 
conscript would turn pale if such a ditty were 
struck up beside him on the morning of battle; 

L. or ci« 



loo AN INLANDVOYAGE 

and whole regiments would pile their arms to its 
tune. 

If Fletcher of Saltoun is in the right about the 
influence of national songs, you would say France 
was come to a poor pass. But the thing will work 
its own cure, and a sound-hearted and courageous 
people weary at length of snivelling over their 
disasters. Already Paul Deroulede has written 
some manly military verses. There is not much 
of the trumpet note in them, perhaps, to stir a 
man's heart in his bosom ; they lack the lyrical 
elation, and move slowly; but they are written in 
a grave, honourable, stoical spirit, which should 
carry soldiers far in a good cause. One feels as 
if one would like to trust Deroulede with some- 
thing. It will be happy if he can so far inoculate 
his fellow-countrymen that they may be trusted 
with their own future. And, in the meantime, 
here is an antidote to '' French Conscripts " and 
much other doleful versification. 

We had left the boats over night in the custody 
of one whom we shall call Carnival. I did not 
properly catch his name, and perhaps that was not 



ORIGNY loi 

unfortunate for him, as I am not in a position to 
hand him down with honour to posterity. To this 
person's premises we strolled in the course of the 
day, and found quite a little deputation inspect- 
ing the canoes. There was a stout gentleman with 
a knowledge of the river, which he seemed eager 
to impart. There was a very elegant young 
gentleman in a black coat, with a smattering of 
English, who led the talk at once to the Oxford 
and Cambridge boat race. And then there were 
three handsome girls from fifteen to twenty ; and 
an old gentleman in a blouse, with no teeth to 
speak of, and a strong country accent. Quite the 
pick of Origny, I should suppose. 

The Cigarette had some mysteries to perform 
with his rigging in the coach-house; so I was 
left to do the parade single-handed. I found 
myself very much of a hero whether I would or 
not. The girls were full of little shudderings over 
the dangers of our journey. And I thought it 
would be ungallant not to take my cue from the 
ladies. My mishap of yesterday, told in an off- 
hand way, produced a deep sensation. It was 



I02 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

Othello over again, with no less than three Des- 
demonas and a sprinkling of sympathetic senators 
in the background. Never were the canoes more 
flattered, or flattered more adroitly. 

'' It is like a violin," cried one of the girls in 
an ecstasy. 

" I thank you for the word, mademoiselle," said 
I. " All the more since there are people who call 
out to me that it is like a coflin." 

" Oh ! but it is really like a violin. It is finished 
like a violin," she went on. 

" And polished like a violin," added a senator. 

" One has only to stretch the cords," concluded 
another, ^' and then tum-tumty-tum " ; he imitated 
the result with spirit. 

Was not this a graceful little ovation? Where 
this people finds the secret of its pretty speeches 
I cannot imagine, unless the secret should be no 
other than a sincere desire to please. But then no 
disgrace is attached in France to saying a thing 
neatly; whereas in England, to talk like a book 
is to give in one's resignation to society. 

The old gentleman in the blouse stole into the 



ORIGNY 103 

coach-house, and somewhat irrelevantly informed 
the Cigarette that he was the father of the three 
girls and four more ; quite an exploit for a 
Frenchman. 

" You are very fortunate," answered the Cigar- 
ette politely. 

And the old gentleman, having apparently gained 
his point, stole away again. 

We all got very friendly together. The girls 
proposed to start with us on the morrow, if you 
please. And, jesting apart, every one was anxious 
to know the hour of our departure. Now, when 
you are going to crawl into your canoe from a bad 
launch, a crowd, however friendly, is undesirable, 
and so we told them not before twelve, and men- 
tally determined to be off by ten at latest. 

Towards evening we went abroad again to post 
some letters. It was cool and pleasant; the long 
village was quite empty, except for one or two 
urchins who followed us as they might have fol- 
lowed a menagerie ; the hills and the tree-tops 
looked in from all sides through the clear air, and 
the bells were chiming for yet another service. 



I04 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

Suddenly we sighted the three girls, standing, 
with a fourth sister, in front of a shop on the wide 
selvage of the roadway. We had been very merry 
with them a little while ago, to be sure. But what 
was the etiquette of Origny? Had it been a 
country road, of course we should have spoken to 
them ; but here, under the eyes of all the gossips, 
ought we to do even as much as bow ? I consulted 
the Cigarette. 

" Look," said he. 

I looked. There were the four girls on the same 
spot; but now four backs were turned to us, very 
upright and conscious. Corporal Modesty had 
given the word of command, and the well-dis- 
ciplined picket had gone right-about-face like a 
single person. They maintained this formation 
all the while we were in sight ; but we heard them 
tittering among themselves, and the girl whom we 
had not met laughed with open mouth, and even 
looked over her shoulder at the enemy. I wonder 
was it altogether modesty after all, or in part a 
sort of country provocation? 

As we were returning to the inn we beheld some- 



ORIGNY 105 

thing floating in the ample field of golden evening 
sky, above the chalk cliffs and the trees that grow 
along their summit. It was too high up, too large, 
and too steady for a kite; and, as it was dark, it 
could not be a star. For, although a star were 
as black as ink and as rugged as a walnut, so 
amply does the sun bathe heaven with radiance 
that it would sparkle like a point of light for us. 
The village was dotted with people with their 
heads in air; and the children were in a bustle 
all along the street and far up the straight road 
that climbs the hill, where we could still see them 
run.ning in loose knots. It was a balloon, we 
learned, which had left St. Ouentin at half-past 
five that evening. Mighty composedly the ma- 
jority of the grown people took it. But we were 
English, and were soon running up the hill with 
the best. Being travellers ourselves in a small 
way, we would fain have seen these other travellers 
alight. 

The spectacle was over by the time we gained 
the top of the hill. All the gold had withered 
out of the sky, and the balloon had disappeared. 



io6 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

Whither? I ask myself; caught up into the 
seventh heaven? or come safely to land some- 
where in that blue, uneven distance, into which 
the roadway dipped and melted before our eyes? 
Probably the aeronauts were already warming 
themselves at a farm chimney, for they say it is 
cold in these unhomely regions of the air. The 
night fell swiftly. Roadside trees and disappointed 
sightseers, returning through the meadows, stood 
out in black against a margin of low, red sunset. 
It was cheerfuUer to face the other way, and so 
down the hill we went, with a full moon, the 
colour of a melon, swinging high above the wooded 
valley, and the white cliffs behind us faintly red- 
dened by the fire of the chalk-kilns. 

The lamps were lighted, and the salads were 
being made in Origny Sainte-Benoite by the river. 



ORIGNY SAINTE-BENOITE 

THE COMPANY AT TABLE 

ll LTHOUGH we came late for dinner, the 

/"^ company at table treated us to sparkling 

wine. " That is how we are in France," 

said one. " Those who sit down with us are our 

friends." And the rest applauded. 

They were three altogether, and an odd trio to 
pass the Sunday with. 

Two of them were guests like ourselves, both 
men of the north. One ruddy, and of a full habit 
of body, with copious black hair and beard, the 
intrepid hunter of France, who thought nothing 
so small, not even a lark or a minnow, but he 
might vindicate his prowess by its capture. For 
such a great, healthy man, his hair flourishing like 
Samson's, his arteries running buckets of red 
blood, to boast of these infinitesimal exploits, pro- 
duced a feeling of disproportion in the world, as 



io8 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

when a steam-hammer is set to cracking nuts. The 
other was a quiet, subdued person, blond, and 
lymphatic, and sad, with something the look of 
a Dane : *' Tristcs tctes de Danois ! " as Gaston 
Lafenestre used to say. 

I must not let that name go by without a word 
for the best of all good fellows, now gone down 
into the dust. We shall never again see Gaston 
in his forest costume, — he was Gaston with all 
the world, in affection, not in disrespect, — nor 
hear him wake the echoes of Fontainebleau with 
the woodland horn. Never again shall his kind 
smile put peace among all races of artistic men, 
and make the Englishman at home in France. 
Never more shall the sheep, who were not more 
innocent at heart than he, sit all unconsciously for 
his industrious pencil. He died too early, at the 
very moment when he was beginning to put forth 
fresh sprouts and blossom into something worthy 
of himself ; and yet none who knew him will 
think he lived in vain. I never knew a man so 
little, for whom yet I had so much affection; and 
I find it a good test of others, how much they had 



ORIGNY 109 

learned to understand and value him. His was, 
indeed, a good influence in life while he was still 
among us ; he had a fresh laugh ; it did you good 
to see him ; and, however sad he may have been 
at heart, he always bore a bold and cheerful coun- 
tenance and took fortune's worst as it were the 
showers of spring. But now his mother sits alone 
by the side of Fontainebleau woods, where he 
gathered mushrooms in his hardy and penurious 
youth. 

Many of his pictures found their way across the 
Channel ; besides those which were stolen, when a 
dastardly Yankee left him alone in London with 
two English pence, and, perhaps, twice as many 
words of English. If any one who reads these 
lines should have a scene of sheep, in the manner 
of Jacques, with this fine creature's signature, let 
him tell himself that one of the kindest and brav- 
est of men has lent a hand to decorate his lodging. 
There may be better pictures in the National Gal- 
lery; but not a painter among the generations 
had a better heart. Precious in the sight of the 
Lord of humanitv, the Psahns tell us, is the death 



no AN INLAND VOYAGE 

of his saints. It had need to be precious ; for it is 
very costly, when, by a stroke, a mother is left 
desolate, and the peace-maker and peace-looker of 
a whole society is laid in the ground with Caesar 
and the Twelve Apostles. 

There is something lacking among the oaks of 
Fontainebleau ; and when the dessert comes in at 
Barbizon, people look to the door for a figure that 
is gone. 

The third of our companions at Origny was no 
less a person than the landlady's husband; not 
properly the landlord, since he worked himself in 
a factory during the day, and came to his own 
house at evening as a guest; a man worn to skin 
and bone by perpetual excitement, with baldish 
head, sharp features, and swift, shining eyes. On 
Saturday, describing some paltry adventure at a 
duck hunt, he broke a plate into a score of frag- 
ments. Whenever he made a remark he would 
look all round the table with his chin raised and 
a spark of green light in either eye, seeking ap- 
proval. His wife appeared now and again in the 



ORIGNY III 

ing dinner, with a '' Henri, you forget yourself," 
or a " Henri, you can surely talk without making 
such a noise." Indeed, that was what the honest 
fellow could not do. On the most trifling matter 
his eyes kindled, his fist visited the table, and his 
voice rolled abroad in changeful thunder. I never 
saw such a petard of a man; I think the devil 
was in him. He had two favourite expres- 
sions, " It is logical," or illogical, as the case 
might be; and this other thrown out with a cer- 
tain bravado, as a man might unfurl a banner, 
at the beginning of many a long and sonorous 
story: ''I am a proletarian, you see." Indeed, 
we saw it very well. God forbid that ever I 
should find him handling a gun in Paris streets. 
That will not be a good moment for the general 
public. 

I thought his two phrases very much repre- 
sented the good and evil of his class, and, to some 
extent, of his country. It is a strong thing to say 
what one is, and not be ashamed of it; even 
although it be in doubtful taste to repeat the 
statement too often in one evening. I should not 



112 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

admire it in a duke, of course ; but as times go the 
trait is honourable in a workman. On the other 
hand, it is not at all a strong thing to put one's 
reliance upon logic; and our own logic particu- 
larly, for it is generally w^'ong. We never know 
where we are to end if once we begin following 
words or doctors. There is an upright stock in a 
man's own heart that is trustier than any syllogism ; 
and the eyes, and the sympathies, and appetites 
know a thing or two that have never yet been 
stated in controversy. Reasons are as plentiful as 
blackberries; and, like fisticuffs, they serve im- 
partially with all sides. Doctrines do not stand 
or fall by their proofs and are only logical in so 
far as they are cleverly put. An able controver- 
sialist no more than an able general demonstrates 
the justice of his cause. But France is all gone 
wandering after one or two big words ; it will 
take some time before they can be satisfied that 
they are no more than words, however big; and, 
when once that is done, they will perhaps find 
logic less diverting. 

The conversation opened with details of the 



ORIGNY 113 

clay's shooting. When all the sportsmen of a 
village shoot over the village territory pro indi- 
z'iso, it is plain that many questions of etiquette 
and priority must arise. 

" Here now," cried the landlord, brandishing 
a plate, " here is a field of beet-root. Well. Here 
am I, then. I advance, do I not? Eh hicn ! 
sacristi''; and the statement, waxing louder, rolls 
off into a reverberation of oaths, the speaker glar- 
ing about for sympathy, and everybody nodding 
his head to him in the name of peace. 

The ruddy Northman told some tales of his 
own prowess in keeping order : notably one of 
a Marquis. 

" Marquis," I said, " if you take another step 
I fire upon you. You have committed a dirtiness, 
Marquis." 

Whereupon, it appeared, the Marquis touched 
his cap and withdrew. 

The landlord applauded noisily. " It was well 

done," he said. '' He did all that he could. He 

admitted he was wrong." And then oath upon 

oath. He was no marquis-lover, either, but he 

8 



114 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

had a sense of justice in him, this proletarian 
host of ours. 

From the matter of hunting, the talk veered 
into a general comparison of Paris and the coun- 
try. The proletarian beat the table like a drum 
in praise of Paris. *' What is Paris ? Paris is 
the cream of France. There are no Parisians; 
it is you, and I, and everybody who are Parisians. 
A man has eighty chances per cent to get on in 
the world in Paris." And he drew a vivid sketch 
of the workman in a den no bigger than a dog- 
hutch, making articles that were to go all over 
the world. " Eh hien, qiioi, c'est magnifique, ga ! " 
cried he. 

The sad Northman interfered in praise of a 
peasant's life; he thought Paris bad for men and 
women. " Centralisation," said he 

But the landlord was at his throat in a moment. 
It was all logical, he showed him, and all mag- 
nificent. " What a spectacle ! What a glance for 
an eye ! " And the dishes reeled upon the table 
under a cannonade of blows. 

Seeking to make peace, I threw in a word in 



ORIGNY 115 

praise of the liberty of opinion in France. I could 
hardly have shot more amiss. There was an in- 
stant silence and a great wagging of significant 
heads. They did not fancy the subject, it was 
plain, but they gave me to understand that the 
sad Northman was a martyr on account of his 
views. '' Ask him a bit," said they. " Just ask 
him." 

" Yes, sir," said he in his quiet w^ay, answering 
me, although I had not spoken, '' I am afraid 
there is less liberty of opinion in France than you 
may imagine." And with that he dropped his 
eyes and seemed to consider the subject at an 
end. 

Our curiosity was mightily excited at this. How% 
or why, or when w^as this lymphatic bagman mar- 
tyred? We concluded at once it was on some 
religious question, and brushed up our memories 
of the Inquisition, which were principally drawn 
from Poe's horrid story, and the sermon in Tris- 
tram Shandy, I believe. 

On the morrow we had an opportunity of going 
further into the question ; for when we rose very 



ii6 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

early to avoid a sympathising deputation at our 
departure, we found the hero up before us. He 
was breaking his fast on white wine and raw 
onions, in order to keep up the character of mar- 
tyr, I conclude. We had a long conversation, 
and made out what we wanted in spite of his 
reserve. But here was a truly curious circum- 
stance. It seems possible for two Scotchmen and 
a Frenchman to discuss during a long half-hour, 
and each nationality have a different idea in view 
throughout. It was not till the very end that we 
discovered his heresy had been political, or that 
he suspected our mistake. The terms and spirit 
in which he spoke of his political beliefs were, in 
our eyes, suited to religious beliefs. And vice 
versa. 

Nothing could be more characteristic of the two 
countries. Politics are the religion of France; as 

Nanty Ewart would have said, '' A d d bad 

religion," while we, at home, keep most of our 
bitterness for all differences about a hymn-book 
or a Hebrew word which, perhaps, neither of the 
parties can translate. And perhaps the miscon- 



ORIGNY 117 

ception is typical of many others that may never 
be cleared up; not only between people of differ- 
ent race, but between those of different sex. 

As for our friend's martyrdom, he was a Com- 
munist, or perhaps only a Communard, which is 
a very different thing, and had lost one or more 
situations in consequence. I think he had also 
been rejected in marriage; but perhaps he had 
a sentimental way of considering business which 
deceived me. He was a mild, gentle creature, 
anyway, and I hope he has got a better situation 
and married a more suitable wife since then. 



DOWN THE OISE 

TO MOY 

CARNIVAL notoriously cheated us at first. 
Finding us easy in our ways, he regretted 
having let us off so cheaply, and, taking 
me aside, told me a cock-and-bull story, with the 
moral of another five francs for the narrator. The 
thing was palpably absurd; but I paid up, and 
at once dropped all friendliness of manner and 
kept him in his place as an inferior, with freez- 
ing British dignity. He saw in a moment that 
he had gone too far and killed a willing horse; 
his face fell ; I am sure he would have refunded 
if he could only have thought of a decent pretext. 
He wished me to drink with him, but I would 
none of his drinks. He grew pathetically tender 
in his professions, but I walked beside him in 
silence or answered him in stately courtesies, and, 



DOWN THE OISE 119 

when we got to the landing-place, passed the 
word in English slang to the Cigarette. 

In spite of the false scent we had thrown out 
the day before, there must have been fifty people 
about the bridge. We were as pleasant as we 
could be with all but Carnival. We said good- 
bye, shaking hands with the old gentleman wdio 
knew the river and the young gentleman who had 
a smattering of English, but never a word for 
Carnival. Poor Carnival, here was a humilia- 
tion. He who had been so much identified with 
the canoes, who had given orders in our name, 
who had shown off the boats and even the boat- 
men like a private exhibition of his own, to be 
now so publicly shamed by the lions of his cara- 
van ! I never saw anybody look more crestfallen 
than he. He hung in the background, coming 
timidly forward ever and again as he thought 
he saw some symptom of a relenting humour, 
and falling hurriedly back when he encountered 
a C(j1(1 stare. Let us hope it will be a lesson to 
him. 

I would not have mentioned Carnival's pecca- 



I20 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

dillo had not the thing been so uncommon in 
France. This, for instance, was the only case 
of dishonesty or even sharp practice in our whole 
voyage. We talk very much about our honesty 
in England. It is a good rule to be on your 
guard wherever you hear great professions about 
a very little piece of virtue. If the English could 
only hear how they are spoken of abroad, they 
might confine themselves for awhile to remedy- 
ing the fact, and perhaps even when that was 
done, give us fewer of their airs. 

The young ladies, the graces of Origny, were 
not present at our start; but when we got round 
to the second bridge, behold, it was black with 
sight-seers! We were loudly cheered, and for a 
good way below young lads and lasses ran along 
the bank, still cheering. What with current and 
paddling, we were flashing along like swallows. It 
was no joke to keep up with us upon the woody 
shore. But the girls picked up their skirts, as 
if they were sure they had good ankles, and fol- 
lowed until their breath was out. The last to 
weary were the tlu'ce graces and a couple of com- 



DOWN THE OISE 121 

panions; and just as they, too, had had enough, 
the foremost of the three leaped upon a tree- 
stump and kissed her hand to the canoeists. Not 
Diana herself, although this was more of a Venus, 
after all, could have done a graceful thing more 
gracefully. *' Come back again ! " she cried ; and 
all the others echoed her; and the hills about 
Origny repeated the words, " Come back." But 
the river had us round an angle in a twinkling, 
and we were alone with the green trees and run- 
ning water. 

Come back? There is no coming back, young 
ladies, on the impetuous stream of life. 

The merchant bows unto the seaman's star, 
The ploughman from the sun his season takes. 

And we must all set our pocket watches by the 
clock of fate. There is a headlong, forthright 
tide, that bears away man with his fancies like 
straw, and runs fast in time and space. It is full 
of curves like this, your winding river of the Oise ; 
and lingers and returns in pleasant pastorals; and 
yet, rightly thought upon, never returns at all. 
For tliuugh it should revisit the same acre of 



122 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

meadow in the same hour, it will have made an 
ample sweep between whiles; many little streams 
will have fallen in ; many exhalations risen towards 
the sun ; and even although it were the same acre, 
it will not be the same river Oise. And thus, O 
graces of Origny, although the wandering fortune 
of my life should carry me back again to where 
you await death's whistle by the river, that will 
not be the old I who walks the street; and those 
wives and mothers, say, will those be you? 

There was never any mistake about the Oise, 
as a matter of fact. In these upper reaches it 
was still in a prodigious hurry for the sea. It 
ran so fast and merrily, through all the windings 
of its channel, that I strained my thumb fighting 
with the rapids, and had to paddle all the rest of 
the way with one hand turned up. Sometimes it 
had to serve mills; and being still a little river, 
ran very dry and shallow in the meanwhile. We 
had to put our legs out of the boat, and shove 
ourselves off the sand of the bottom with our 
feet. And still it went on its way singing among 
the poplars, and making a green valley in the 



DOWN THE OISE 123 

world. After a good woman, and a good book, 
and tobacco, there is nothing so agreeable on earth 
as a river. I forgave it its attempt on my life; 
which was, after all, one part owing to the unruly 
winds of heaven that had blown down the tree, 
one part to my own mismanagement, and only a 
third part to the river itself, and that not out of 
malice, but from its great preoccupation over its 
own business of getting to the sea. A difficult 
business, too; for the detours it had to make are 
not to be counted. The geographers seem to have 
given up the attempt; for I found no map repre- 
sent the infinite contortion of its course. A fact 
will say more than any of them. After we had 
been some hours, three, if I mistake not, flitting 
by the trees at this smooth, breakneck gallop, when 
we came upon a hamlet and asked where we were, 
we had got no further than four kilometres (say 
two miles and a half) from Origny. If it were 
not for the honour of the thing (in the Scotch 
saying), we might almost as well have been stand- 
ing still. 

We lunched on a meadow inside a parallelogram 



124 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

of poplars. The leaves danced and prattled in the 
wind all round about us. The river hurried on 
meanwhile, and seemed to chide at our delay. 
Little we cared. The river knew where it was 
going; not so we; the less our hurry, where we 
found good quarters, and a pleasant theatre for 
a pipe. At that hour stock-brokers were shout- 
ing in Paris Bourse for two or three per cent; 
but we minded them as little as the sliding 
stream, and sacrificed a hecatomb of minutes to 
the gods of tobacco and digestion. Hurry is the 
resource of the faithless. Where a man can trust 
his own heart, and those of his friends, to-mor- 
row is as good as to-day. And if he die in the 
meanwhile, why, then, there he dies, and the ques- 
tion is solved. 

We had to take to the canal in the course of the 
afternoon; because where it crossed the river 
there was, not a bridge, but a siphon. If it had 
not been for an excited fellow on the bank we 
should have paddled right into the siphon, and 
thenceforward not paddled any more. We met 
a man, a gentleman, on the tow-path, who was 



DOWN THE OISE 125 

much interested in our cruise. And I was wit- 
ness to a strange seizure of lying suffered by the 
Cigarette; who, because his knife came from Nor- 
way, narrated all sorts of adventures in that 
country, where he has never been. He was quite 
feverish at the end, and pleaded demoniacal 
possession. 

Moy (pronounce Moy) was a pleasant little 
village, gathered round a chateau in a moat. The 
air was perfumed with hemp from neighbouring 
fields. At the Golden Sheep we found excellent 
entertainment. German shells from the siege of 
La Fere, Niirnberg figures, gold-fish in a bowl, 
and all manner of knick-knacks, embellished the 
public room. The landlady was a stout, plain, 
short-sighted, motherly body, with something not 
far short of a genius for cookery. She had a 
guess of her excellence herself. After every dish 
was sent in, she would come and look on at the 
dinner for awhile, with puckered, blinking eyes. 
'' C'est hon, nest-ce pasf she would say; and, 
wdien she had received a proper answer, she dis- 
appeared into the kitchen. That common French 



126 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

dish, partridge and cabbages, became a new thing 
in my eyes at the Golden Sheep; and many sub- 
sequent dinners have bitterly disappointed me in 
consequence. Sweet was our rest in the Golden 
Sheep at Moy. 



LA FERE OF CURSED MEMORY 

WE lingered in Moy a good part of the 
day, for we were fond of being philo- 
sophical, and scorned long journeys 
and early starts on principle. The place, more- 
over, invited to repose. People in elaborate shoot- 
ing-costumes sallied from the chateau with guns 
and game-bags; and this was a pleasure in itself, 
to remain behind while these elegant pleasure- 
seekers took the first of the morning. In this way 
all the world may be an aristocrat, and play the 
duke among marquises, and the reigning monarch 
among dukes, if he will only outvie them in tran- 
quillity. An imperturbable demeanour comes 
from perfect patience. Quiet minds cannot be 
perplexed or frightened, but go on in fortune or 
misfortune at their own private pace, like a clock 
during a thunder-storm. 



128 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

We made a very short day of it to La Fere; 
but the dusk was falHng and a small rain had 
begun before we stowed the boats. La Fere is 
a fortified town in a plain, and has two belts of 
rampart. Between the first and the second ex- 
tends a region of waste land and cultivated 
patches. Here and there along the wayside were 
posters forbidding trespass in the name of mili- 
tary engineering. At last a second gateway ad- 
mitted us to the town itself. Lighted windows 
looked gladsome, whiffs of comfortable cookery 
came abroad upon the air. The town was full of 
the military reserve, out for the French Autumn 
manoeuvres, and the reservists walked speedily 
and wore their formidable great-coats. It was a 
fine night to be within doors over dinner, and hear 
the rain upon the windows. 

The Cigarette and I could not sufficiently con- 
gratulate each other on the prospect, for we had 
been told there was a capital inn at La Fere. Such 
a dinner as we were going to eat ! such beds as 
we were to sleep in ! and all the while the rain 
raining on houseless folk over all the poplared 



LA F£RE 129 

country-side. It made our mouths water. The 
inn bore the name of some woodland animal, stag, 
or hart, or hind, I forget which. But I shall never 
forget how spacious and how eminently habitable 
it looked as we drew near. The carriage entry 
was lighted up, not by intention, but from the 
mere superfluity of fire and candle in the house. 
A rattle of many dishes came to our ears; we 
sighted a great field of tablecloth; the kitchen 
glowed like a forge and smelt like a garden of 
things to eat. 

Into this, the inmost shrine and physiological 
heart of a hostelry, with all its furnaces in action 
and all its dressers charged with viands, you are 
now to suppose us making our triumphal entry, a 
pair of damp rag-and-bone men, each with a limp 
india-rubber bag upon his arm. I do not believe 
I have a sound view of that kitchen; I saw it 
through a sort of glory, but it seemed to me 
crowded with the snowy caps of cookmen, who 
all turned round from their saucepans and looked 
at us with surprise. There was no doubt about 
the landladv, however; there she was, heading 



I30 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

her army, a flushed, angry woman, full of affairs. 
Her I asked politely — too politely, thinks the 
CigGJ'ctte — if we could have beds, she surveying 
us coldly from head to foot. 

'* You will find beds in the suburb," she re- 
marked. " We are too busy for the like of 
you." 

If we could make an entrance, change our 
clothes, and order a bottle of wine, I felt sur-e we 
could put things right; so said I, "If we can- 
not sleep, we may at least dine," — and was for 
depositing my bag. 

What a terrible convulsion of nature was that 
which followed in the landlady's face! She made 
a run at us and stamped her foot. 

" Out with you, — out of the door ! " she 
screeched. " Sortcz! sortcz! sortcz par la porte!" 

I do not know how it happened, but next mo- 
ment we were out in the rain and darkness, and I 
was cursing before the carriage entry like a disap- 
pointed mendicant. Where were the boating-men 
of Belgium? where the judge and his good wines? 
and where the graces of Origny? Black, black 



LA F6RE 131 

was the night after the fireht kitchen, but what 
was that to the blackness in our heart? This was 
not the first time that I have been refused a lodging. 
Often and often have I planned what I should do 
if such a misadventure happened to me again. And 
nothing is easier to plan. But to put in execution, 
with the heart boiling at the indignity? Try it; 
try it only once, and tell me what you did. 

It is all very fine to talk about tramps and 
morality. Six hours of police surveillance (such 
as I have had) or one brutal rejection from an 
inn door change your views upon the subject like 
a course of lectures. As long as you keep in the 
upper regions, with all the world bowing to you 
as you go, social arrangements have a very hand- 
some air; but once get under the wheels and you 
wish society were at the devil. I will give most 
respectable men a fortnight of such a life, and then 
I will offer them twopence for what remains of 
their morality. 

For my part, when I was turned out of the Stag, 
or the Hind, or whatever it was, I would have 
set the temple of Diana on fire if it had been handy. 



132 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

There was no crime complete enough to express 
my disapproval of human institutions. As for the 
Cigarette, I never knew^ a man so altered. " We 
have been taken for pedlars again," said he. 
" Good God, what it must be to be a pedlar in 
reality! " He particularised a complaint for every 
joint in the landlady's body. Timon was a phi- 
lanthropist alongside of him. And then, when he 
was at the top of his maledictory bent, he would 
suddenly break away and begin whimperingly to 
commiserate the poor. " I hope to God," he said, 
— and I trust the prayer was answered, — " that 
I shall never be uncivil to a pedlar." Was this 
the imperturbable Cigarette f This, this was he. 
Oh, change beyond report, thought, or belief! 

Meantime the heaven wept upon our heads ; and 
the windows grew brighter as the night increased 
in darkness. We trudged in and out of La Fere 
streets; we saw shops, and private houses where 
people were copiously dining; we saw stables 
where carters' nags had plenty of fodder and clean 
straw ; we saw no end of reservists, who were very 
sorrv for themselves this wet night, I doubt not, 



LA FERE 133 

and yearned for their country homes ; but had 
they not each man his place in La Fere barracks? 
And we, what had we? 

There seemed to be no other inn in the whole 
town. People gave us directions, which we fol- 
lowed as best we could, generally with the effect 
of bringing us out again upon the scene of our 
disgrace. We were very sad people indeed, by the 
time we had gone all over La Fere; and the 
Cigarette had already made up his mind to lie 
under a poplar and sup off a loaf of bread. But 
right at the other end, the house next the town- 
gate w^as full of light and bustle. '' Bazin, auber- 
giste, loge a pied," was the sign. '' A la Croix de 
Maltcf' There were we received. 

The room was full of noisy reservists drinking 
and smoking ; and we were very glad indeed when 
the drums and bugles began to go about the streets, 
and one and ail had to snatch shakoes and be off 
for the barracks. 

Bazin was a tall man, running to fat; soft- 
spoken, with a delicate, gentle face. We asked 
him to share our wine; but he excused himself, 



134 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

having pledged reservists all day long. This was 
a very different type of the workman-innkeeper 
from the bawling, disputatious fellow at Origny. 
He also loved Paris, where he had worked as a 
decorative painter in his youth. There were such 
opportunities for self-instruction there, he said. 
And if any one has read Zola's description of the 
workman's marriage party visiting the Louvre they 
would do well to have heard Bazin by way of 
antidote. He had delighted in the museums in his 
youth. '' One sees there little miracles of work," 
he said ; '' that is what makes a good workman ; 
it kindles a spark." We asked him how he man- 
aged in La Fere. " I am married," he said, 
" and I have my pretty children. But frankly, 
it is no life at all. From morning to night I 
pledge a pack of good-enough fellows who know 
nothing." 

It faired as the night went on, and the moon 
came out of the clouds. We sat in front of the 
door, talking softly with Bazin. At the guard- 
house opposite the guard was being for ever turned 
out, as trains of field artillery kept clanking in out 



LA F£RE 135 

of the night or patrols of horsemen trotted by 
in their cloaks. Madame Bazin came out after 
awhile; she was tired with her day's work, I sup- 
pose; and she nestled up to her husband and laid 
her head upon his breast. He had his arm about 
her and kept gently patting her on the shoul- 
der. I think Bazin was right, and he was really 
married. Of how few people can the same be 
said! 

Little did the Bazins know how much they served 
us. We were charged for candles, for food and 
drink, and for the beds we slept in. But there was 
nothing in the bill for the husband's pleasant talk; 
nor for the pretty spectacle of their married life. 
And there was yet another item uncharged. For 
these people's politeness really set us up again in 
our own esteem. We had a thirst for considera- 
tion ; the sense of insult was still hot in our spirits ; 
and civil usage seemed to restore us to our position 
in the world. 

How little we pay our way in life! Although 
we have our purses continually in our hand, the 
better part of service goes still unrewarded. But 



136 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

I like to fancy that a grateful spirit gives as good 
as it gets. Perhaps the Bazins knew how much 
I liked them? perhaps they, also, were healed of 
some slights by the thanks that I gave them in 
my manner? 



DOWN THE OISE 

THROUGH THE GOLDEN VALLEY 

BELOW La Fere the river runs through a 
piece of open pastoral country; green, 
opulent, loved by breeders; called the 
Golden Valley. In wide sweeps, and with a swift 
and equable gallop, the ceaseless stream of w^ater 
visits and makes green the fields. Kine, and horses, 
and little humourous donkeys browse together in 
the meadows, and come down in troops to the river- 
side to drink. They make a strange feature in the 
landscape; above all when startled, and you see 
them galloping to and fro, with their incongruous 
forms and faces. It gives a feeling as of great, 
unfenced pampas, and the herds of wandering 
nations. There were hills in the distance upon 
either hand; and on one side, the river some- 
times bordered on the wooded spurs of Coucy and 
St. Gobain. 



ijS AN INLAND VOYAGE 

The artillery were practising at La Fere; and 
soon the cannon of heaven joined in that loud play. 
Two continents of cloud met and exchanged salvos 
overhead; while all round the horizon we could 
see sunshine and clear air upon the hills. What 
with the guns and the thunder, the herds were all 
frightened in the Golden Valley. We could see 
them tossing their heads, and running to and fro 
in timorous indecision; and when they had made 
up their minds, and the donkey followed the horse, 
and the cow was after the donkey, we could hear 
their hoofs thundering abroad over the meadows. 
It had a martial sound, like cavalry charges. And 
altogether, as far as the ears are concerned, we 
had a very rousing battle piece performed for our 
amusement. 

x\t last, the guns and the thunder dropped off; 
the sun shone on the wet meadows; the air was 
scented with the breath of rejoicing trees and grass ; 
and the river kept unwcariedly carrying us on at 
its best pace. There was a manufacturing district 
about Chauny; and after that the banks grew so 
high that they hid the adjacent country, and we 



DOWN THE OISE 139 

could see nothing but clay sides, and one willow 
after another. Only here and there we passed by 
a village or a ferry, and some wondering child 
upon the bank would stare after us until we turned 
the corner. I dare say we continued to paddle in 
that child's dreams for many a night after. 

Sun and shower alternated like day and night, 
making the hours longer by their variety. When 
the showers were heavy I could feel each drop 
striking through my jersey to my warm skin ; and 
the accumulation of small shocks put me nearly 
beside myself. I decided I should buy a mackintosh 
at Noyon. It is nothing to get wxt; but the 
misery of these individual pricks of cold all over 
my body at the same instant of time made me 
flail the vv^ater with my paddle like a madman. 
The Cigarette w^as greatly amused by these ebulli- 
tions. It gave him something else to look at 
besides clay banks and willows. 

All the time the river stole away like a thief in 
straight places, or swung round corners with an 
eddy; the willows nodded and were undermined 
all day long ; the clay banks tumbled in ; the Oise, 



I40 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

which had been so many centuries making the 
Golden Valley, seemed to have changed its fancy 
and be bent upon undoing its performance. What 
a number of things a river does by simply following 
Gravity in the innocence of its heart ! 



NOYON CATHEDRAL 

NO YON stands about a mile from the 
river, in a little plain surrounded by 
wooded hills, and entirely covers an 
eminence with its tile roofs, surmounted by a long, 
straight-backed cathedral with two stiff towers. 
As we got into the town, the tile roofs seemed to 
tumble up-hill one upon another, in the oddest dis- 
order ; but for all their scrambling they did not 
attain above the knees of the cathedral, which 
stood, upright and solemn, over all. As the streets 
drew near to this presiding genius, through the 
market-place under the Hotel de Ville, they grew 
emptier and more composed. Blank walls and 
shuttered windows were turned to the great edifice, 
and grass grew on the white causeway. " Put off 
thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon 
thou standest is holy ground." The Hotel du 



142 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

Nord, nevertheless, lights its secular tapers within 
a stone-cast of the church ; and we had the superb 
east end before our eyes all morning from the 
window of our bedroom. I have seldom looked 
on the east end of a church with more complete 
sympath}^ As it flanges out in three wide terraces, 
and settles down broadly on the earth, it looks 
like the poop of some great old battle-ship. Hol- 
low-backed buttresses carry vases, which figure 
for the stern lanterns. There is a roll in the 
ground, and the towers just appear above the pitch 
of the roof, as though the good ship were bow- 
ing lazily over an Atlantic swell. At any moment 
it might be a hundred feet away from you, climb- 
ing the next billow. At any moment a window 
might open, and some old admiral thrust forth a 
cocked hat and proceed to take an observation. 
The old admirals sail the sea no longer; the old 
ships of battle are all broken up, and live only in 
pictures; but this, that was a church before ever 
they were thought upon, is still a church, and makes 
as brave an appearance by the Oise. The cathedral 
and the river are probably the two oldest things 



NOYON CATHEDRAL 143 

for miles around; and certainly they have both a 
grand old age. 

The Sacristan took us to the top of one of the 
towers, and showed us the five bells hanging in 
their loft. From above the town was a tessellated 
pavement of roofs and gardens; the old line of 
rampart was plainly traceable; and the Sacristan 
pointed out to us, far across the plain, in a bit of 
gleaming sky between two clouds, the towers of 
Chateau Coucy. 

I find I never weary of great churches. It is 
my favourite kind of mountain scenery. Man- 
kind was never so happily inspired as when it 
made a cathedral : a thing as single and specious 
as a statue to the first glance, and yet, on examina- 
tion, as lively and interesting as a forest in detail. 
The height of spires cannot be taken by trigonome- 
try; they measure absurdly short, but how tall 
they are to the admiring eye! And where w^e 
have so many elegant proportions, growing one 
out of the other, and all together into one, it seems 
as if proportion transcended itself and became 
something different and more imposing. I could 



144 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

never fathom how a man dares to hft up his voice 
to preach in a cathedral. What is he to say that 
will not be an anti-climax? For though I have 
heard a considerable variety of sermons, I never 
yet heard one that was so expressive as a cathedral. 
'T is the best preacher itself, and preaches day and 
night; not only telling you of man's art and as- 
pirations in the past, but convicting your own soul 
of ardent sympathies; or rather, like all good 
preachers, it sets you preaching to yourself, — and 
every man is his own doctor of divinity in the last 
resort. 

As I sat outside of the hotel in the course of the 
afternoon, the sweet, groaning thunder of the organ 
floated out of the church like a summons. I was 
not averse, liking the theatre so well, to sit out an 
act or two of the play, but I could never rightly 
make out the nature of the service I beheld. Four 
or five priests and as many choristers were singing 
Miserere before the high altar when I went in. 
There was no congregation but a few old women 
on chairs and old men kneeling on the pavement. 
After awhile a long train of young girls, walk- 



NOYON CATHEDRAL 145 

ing two and two, each with a Hghted taper in 
her hand, and all dressed in black with a white 
veil, came from behind the altar and began to 
descend the nave; the four first carrying a Virgin 
and Child upon a table. The priests and choristers 
arose from their knees and followed after, singing 
" Ave Mary '^ as they went. In this order they 
made the circuit of the cathedral, passing twice 
before me where I leaned against a pillar. The 
priest who seemed of most consequence was a 
strange, down-looking old man. He kept mum- 
bling prayers with his lips ; but, as he looked upon 
me darkling, it did not seem as if prayer were 
uppermost in his heart. Two others, who bore 
the burden of the chant, were stout, brutal, mili- 
tary-looking men of forty, with bold, over-fed eyes ; 
they sang with some lustiness, and trolled forth 
" Ave Mary " like a garrison catch. The little 
girls were timid and grave. As they footed slowly 
up the aisle, each one took a moment's glance at 
the Englishman ; and the big nun who played mar- 
shal fairly stared him out of countenance. As for 

the choristers, from first to last they misbehaved 

10 



\ 



146 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

as only boys can misbehave, and cruelly marred 
the performance with their antics. 

I understood a great deal of the spirit of what 
went on. Indeed, it would be difficult not to under- 
stand the Miserere, which I take to be the com- 
position of an atheist. If it ever be a good thing to 
take such despondency to heart, the Miserere is 
the right music and a cathedral a fit scene. So 
far I am at one with the Catholics, — an odd name 
for them, after all ! But why, in God's name, 
these holiday choristers? why these priests who 
steal wandering looks about the congregation while 
they feign to be at prayer? why this fat. nun, who 
rudely arranges her procession and shakes delin- 
quent virgins by the elbow ? why this spitting, and 
snuffing, and forgetting of keys, and the thousand 
and one little misadventures that disturb a frame 
of mind, laboriously edified with chants and organ- 
ings? In any play-house reverend fathers may 
see what can be done with a little art, and how, 
to move high sentiments, it is necessary to drill the / 
supernumeraries and have every stool in its proper 
place. 



NOYON CATHEDRAL 147 

One other circumstance distressed me. I could 
bear a Miserere myself, having had a good deal of 
open-air exercise of late; but I wished the old 
people somewhere else. It was neither the right 
sort of music nor the right sort of divinity for 
men and women who have come through most 
accidents by this time, and probably have an opin- 
ion of their own upon the tragic element in life. 
A person up in years can generally do his own 
Miserere for himself; although I notice that such 
an one often prefers Jubilate Deo for his ordinary 
singing. On the whole, the most religious exercise 
for the aged is probably to recall their own ex- 
perience; so many friends dead, so many hopes 
disappointed, so many slips and stumbles, and 
W'ithal so many bright days and smiling provi- 
dences ; there is surely the matter of a very elo- 
quent sermon in all this. 

On the whole I was greatly solemnised. In the 
little pictorial map of our whole Inland Voyage, 
which my fancy still preserves, and sometimes 
unrolls for the amusement of odd moments, 
Noyon cathedral figures on a most preposterous 



148 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

scale, and must be nearly as large as the depart- 
ment. I can still see the faces of the priests 
as if they were at my elbow, and hear Ave 
Maria, ora pro nobis sounding through the church. 
All Noyon is blotted out for me by these superior 
memories ; and I do not care to say more about 
the place. It was but a stack of brown roofs at 
the best, where I believe people live very reputably 
in a quiet way; but the shadow of the church 
falls upon it when the sun is low, and the five bells 
are heard in all quarters, telling that the organ has 
begun. If ever I join the church of Rome I shall 
stipulate to be Bishop of Noyon on the Oise. 



DOWN THE OISE 

TO C0MPI£GNE 

THE most patient people grow weary at 
last with being continually wetted with 
rain; except, of course, in the Scotch 
Highlands, where there are not enough fine in- 
tervals to point the difference. That was like to 
be our case the day we left Noyon. I remember 
nothing of the voyage; it was nothing but clay 
banks, and willows, and rain ; incessant, pitiless, 
beating rain ; until we stopped to lunch at a little 
inn at Pimprez, where the canal ran very near the 
river. We were so sadly drenched that the land- 
lady lit a few sticks in the chimney for our comfort ; 
there we sat in a steam of vapour lamenting our 
concerns. The husband donned a game-bag and 
strode out to shoot; the wife sat in a far corner 
watching us. I think we were worth looking at. 
We grumbled over the misfortune of La Fere; we 



I50 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

forecast other La Feres in the future, — although 
things went better with the Cigarette for spokes- 
man ; he had more apl(jmb ahogether than I ; and 
a dull, positive way of approaching a landlady 
that carried off the india-rubber bags. Talking of 
La Fere put us talking of the reservists. 

" Reservery," said he, " seems a pretty mean 
way to spend one's autumn holiday." 

" About as mean," returned I, dejectedly, " as 
canoeing." 

"These gentlemen travel for their pleasure?" 
asked the landlady, with unconscious irony. 

It was too much. The scales fell from our eyes. 
Another wet day, it was determined, and we put 
the boats into the train. 

The weather took the hint. That was our last 
wetting. The afternoon faired up; grand clouds 
still voyaged in the sky, but now singly, and with 
a depth of blue around their path ; and a sunset, 
in the daintiest rose and gold, inaugurated a thick 
night of stars and a month of unbroken weather. 
At the same time, the river began to give us a 
better outlook into the country. The banks were 



DOWN THE OISE 151 

not so high, the willows disappeared from along 
the margin, and pleasant hills stood all along its 
course and marked their profile on the sky. 

In a little while the canal, coming to its last 
lock, began to discharge its water houses on the 
Oise ; so that we had no lack of company to fear. 
Here were all our old friends ; the Deo Gratias 
of Conde and the Four So]is of Aymon journeyed 
cheerily down the stream along with us; we ex- 
changed water-side pleasantries with the steersman 
perched among the lumber, or the driver hoarse 
with bawling to his horses ; and the children came 
and looked over the side as we paddled by. We 
had never known all this while how much we 
missed them ; but it gave us a fillip to see the smoke 
from their chimneys. 

A little below this junction we made another 
meeting of yet more account. For there we were 
joined by the Aisne, already a far-travelled river 
and fresh out of Champagne. Here ended the 
adolescence of the Oise ; this was his marriage 
day ; thenceforward he had a stately, brimming 
march, conscious of his own dignity and sundry 



152 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

dams. He became a tranquil feature in the scene. 
The trees and towns saw themselves in him, as 
in a mirror. He carried the canoes lightly on his 
broad breast; there was no need to work hard 
against an eddy, but idleness became the order of 
the day, and mere straightforward dipping of the 
paddle, now on this side, now on that, without 
intelligence or effort. Truly we were coming 
into halcyon weather upon all accounts, and were 
floated towards the sea like gentlemen. 

We made Compiegne as the sun was going down : 
a fine profile of a town above the river. Over the 
bridge a regiment was parading to the drum. 
People loitered on the quay, some fishing, some 
looking idly at the stream. And as the two boats 
shot in along the water, we could see them point- 
ing them out and speaking one to another. We 
landed at a floating lavatory, wdiere the washer- 
w^omen were still beating the clothes. 



AT COMPIEGNE 

WE put up at a big, bustling hotel in 
Compiegne, where nobody observed our 
presence. 
Reservery and general militarismiis (as the Ger- 
mans call it) was rampant. A camp of conical 
white tents without the town looked like a leaf out 
of a picture Bible ; sword-belts decorated the walls 
of the cafes, and the streets kept sounding all day 
long with military music. It was not possible to 
be an Englishman and avoid a feeling of elation; 
for the men who followed the drums were small 
and w^alked shabbily. Each man inclined at his 
own angle, and jolted to his own convenience as 
he went. There was nothing of the superb gait 
with which a regiment of tall Highlanders moves 
behind its music, solemn and inevitable, like a 
natural phenomenon. Who, that has seen it, can 
forget the drum-major pacing in front, the drum- 



154 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

mers' tiger-skins, the pipers' swinging plaids, the 
strange, elastic rhythm of the whole regiment foot- 
ing it in time, and the bang of the drum when the 
brasses cease, and the shrill pipes taking up the 
martial story in their place? 

A girl at school in France began to describe one 
of our regiments on parade to her French school- 
mates, and as she went on, she told me the recollec- 
tion grew so vivid, she became so proud to be the 
countrywoman of such soldiers, and so sorry to 
be in another country, that her voice failed her and 
she burst into tears. I have never forgotten that 
girl, and I think she very nearly deserves a statue. 
To call her a young lady, with all its niminy as- 
sociations, would be to offer her an insult. She 
may rest assured of one thing, although she never 
should marry a heroic general, never see any great 
or immediate result of her life, she will not have 
lived in vain for her native land. 

But though French soldiers show to ill-advan- 
tage on parade, on the march they are gay, alert, 
and willing, like a troop of fox-hunters. I re- 
member once seeing a company pass through the 



AT COMPlfeGNE 



SS 



forest of Fontainebleau, on the Chailly road, be- 
tween the Bas Breau and the Reine Blanche. One 
fellow walked a little before the rest,- and sang a 
loud, audacious marching song. The rest be- 
stirred their feet, and even swung their muskets 
in time. A young officer on horseback had 
hard ado to keep his countenance at the w^ords. 
You never saw anything so cheerful and spon- 
taneous as their gait; school-boys do not look 
more eagerly at hare and hounds; and you 
would have thought it impossible to tire such 
willing marchers. 

My great delight in Compiegne was the town 
hall. I doted upon the town hall. It is a monu- 
ment of Gothic insecurity, all turreted, and gar- 
goyled, and slashed, and bedizened w^ith half a 
score of architectural fancies. Some of the niches 
are gilt and painted ; and in a great square panel 
in the centre, in black relief on a gilt ground, 
Louis XII. rides upon a pacing horse, w^ith hand 
on hip, and head thrown back. There is royal 
arrogance in every line of him ; the stirrupped 
foot projects insolently from the frame; the eye 



156 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

is hard and proud; the very horse seems to be 
treading with gratification over prostrate serfs, 
and to have the breath of the trumpet in his 
nostrils. So rides for ever, on the front of the 
town hall, the good King Louis XII., the father 
of his people. 

Over the king's head, in the tall centre turret, 
appears the dial of a clock; and high above that, 
three little mechanical figures, each one with a 
hammer in his hand, whose business it is to chime 
out the hours, and halves, and quarters for the 
burgesses of Compiegne. The centre figure has 
a gilt breastplate ; the two others wear gilt trunk- 
hose; and they all three have elegant, flapping 
hats like cavaliers. As the quarter approaches 
they turn their heads and look knowingly one to 
the other; and then, kling go the three hammers 
on three little bells below. The hour follows, deep 
and sonorous, from the interior of the tower; and 
the gilded gentlemen rest from their labours with 
contentment. 

I had a great deal of healthy pleasure from 
their manoeuvres, and took good care to miss as 



AT COMPlfeGNE 157 

few performances as possible; and I found that 
even the Cigarette, while he pretended to desj^ise 
my enthusiasm, was more or less a devotee him- 
self. There is something highly absurd in the 
exposition of such toys to the outrages of winter 
on a housetop. They would be more in keeping 
in a glass case before a Niirnberg clock. Above 
all, at night, when the children are abed, and 
even grown people are snoring under quilts, does 
it not seem impertinent to leave these gingerbread 
figures winking and tinkling to the stars and the 
rolling moon? The gargoyles may fitly enough 
twist their ape-like heads ; fitly enough may the 
potentate bestride his charger, like a centurion in 
an old German print of the Via Dolorosa; but the 
toys should be put away in a box among some 
cotton, until the sun rises, and the children are 
abroad again to be amused. 

In Compiegne post-office a great packet of letters 
awaited us ; and the authorities were, for this occa- 
sion only, so polite as to hand them over upon 
application. 

In some way, our journey may be said to end 



158 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

with this letter-bag at Compiegne. The spell was 
broken. We had partly come home from that 
moment. 

No one should have any correspondence on a 
journey; it is bad enough to have to write; but 
the receipt of letters is the death of all holiday 
feeling. 

^' Out of my country and myself I go." I wish 
to take a dive among new conditions for awhile, 
as into another element. I have nothing to do with 
my friends or my affections for the time; when 
I came away, I left my heart at home in a desk, 
or sent it forward with portmanteau to await me 
at my destination. After my journey is over, I 
shall not fail to read your admirable letters with 
the attention they deserve. But I have paid all 
this money, look you, and paddled all these strokes, 
for no other purpose than to be abroad; and yet 
you keep me at home with your perpetual com- 
munications. You tug the string, and I feel that 
I am a tethered bird. You pursue me all over 
Europe with the little vexations that I came away 
to avoid. There is no discharge in the war of life. 



AT COMPlfiGNE 159 

I am well aware ; but shall there not be so much 
as a week's furlough? 

We were up by six, the day we were to leave. 
They had taken so little note of us that I hardly 
thoug-ht they w^ould have condescended on a bill. 
But they did, with some smart particulars, too; 
and we paid in a civilised manner to an uninter- 
ested clerk, and went out of that hotel, with the 
india-rubber bags, unremarked. No one cared to 
know about us. It is not possible to rise before 
a village ; but Compiegne was so grown a town 
that it took its ease in the morning; and we were 
up and away while it was still in dressing-gown 
and slippers. The streets w^ere left to people wash- 
ing door-steps; nobody was in full dress but the 
cavaliers upon the town hall ; they were all w^ashed 
with dew, spruce in their gilding, and full of 
intelligence and a sense of professional responsi- 
bility. Kling went they on the bells for the half- 
past six, as we went by. I took it kind of them 
to make me this parting compliment ; they never 
were in better form, not even at noon upon a 
Sunday. 



i6o AN INLAND VOYAGE 

There was no one to see us off but the early 
washerwomen, — early and late, — who were al- 
ready beating the linen in their floating lavatory 
on the river. They were very merry and matutinal 
in their ways; plunged their arms boldly in, and 
seemed not to feel the shock. It would be dispir- 
iting to me, this early beginning and first cold 
dabble of a most dispiriting day's work. But I 
believe they would have been as unwilling to 
change days with us as we could be to change 
with them. They crowded to the door to watch 
us paddle away into the thin sunny mists upon the 
river; and shouted heartily after us till we were 
through the bridge. 



CHANGED TIMES 

THERE is a sense in which those mists 
never rose from off our journey; and 
from that time forth they He very densely 
in my note-book. As long as the Oise was a small, 
rural river it took us near by people's doors, and 
we could hold a conversation with natives in the 
riparian fields. But now that it had grown so wide, 
the life along shore passed us by at a distance. It 
w^as the same difference as between a great public 
highway and a country by-path that wanders in 
and out of cottage gardens. We now lay in towns, 
where nobody troubled us with questions ; we had 
floated into civilised life, where people pass with- 
out salutation. In sparsely inhabited places w^e 
make all we can of each encounter; but when it 
comes to a city, we keep to ourselves, and never 
speak unless we have trodden on a man's toes. 
In these waters we were no longer strange birds, 



i62 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

and nobody supposed we had travelled farther than 
from the last town. I remember, when we came 
into L'Isle Adam, for instance, how we met dozens 
of pleasure-boats outing it for the afternoon, and 
there was nothing to distinguish the true voyager 
from the amateur, except, perhaps, the filthy con- 
dition of my sail. The company in one boat actu- 
ally thought they recognised me for a neighbour. 
Was there ever anything more wounding? All 
the romance had come down to that. Now, on the 
upper Oise, where nothing sailed, as a general 
thing, but fish, a pair of canoeists could not be 
thus vulgarly explained away; we were strange 
and picturesque intruders; and out of people's 
wonder sprang a sort of light and passing intimacy 
all along our route. There is nothing but tit for 
tat in this world, though sometimes it be a little 
difificult to trace: for the scores are older than 
we ourselves, and there has never yet been a set- 
tling-day since things were. You get entertain- 
ment pretty much in proportion as you give. As 
long as we were a sort of odd wanderers, to be 
stared at and followed like a quack doctor or a 



CHANGED TIMES 163 

caravan, we had no want of amusement in return ; 
but as soon as we sank into commonplace our- 
selves, all whom we met were similarly disen- 
chanted. And here is one reason of a dozen why 
the world is dull to dull persons. 

In our earlier adventures there was generally 
something to do, and that quickened us. Even the 
showers of rain had a revivifying effect, and shook 
up the brain from torpor. But now, when the river 
no longer ran in a proper sense, only glided sea- 
ward with an even, outright, but imperceptible 
speed, and when the sky smiled upon us day after 
day without variety, we began to slip into that 
golden doze of the mind which follows upon much 
exercise in the open air. I have stupefied myself 
in this way more than once : indeed, I dearly love 
the feeling; but I never had it to the same degree 
as when paddling down the Oise. It was the 
apotheosis of stupidity. 

We ceased reading entirely. Sometimes, when 
I found a new paper, I took a particular pleasure 
in reading a single number of the current novel ; 
but I never could bear more than three instalments ; 



i64 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

and even the second was a disappointment. As 
soon as the tale became in any way perspicuous, 
it lost all merit in my eyes ; only a single scene, 
or, as is the way with these fcnillctons, half a 
scene, without antecedent or consequence, like a 
piece of a dream, had the knack of fixing my inter- 
est. The less I saw of the novel the better I liked 
it : a pregnant reflection. But for the most part, 
as I said, we neither of us read anything in the 
world, and employed the very little while we were 
awake between bed and dinner in poring upon 
maps. I have always been fond of maps, and can 
voyage in an atlas with the greatest enjoyment. 
The names of places are singularly inviting; the 
contour of coasts and rivers is enthralling to the 
eye; and to hit in a map upon some place you 
have heard of before makes history a new pos- 
session. But we thumbed our charts, on those 
evenings, with the blankest unconcern. We cared 
not a fraction for this place or that. We stared 
at the sheet as children listen to their rattle, and 
read the names of towns or villages to forget 
them aofain at once. We had no romance in the 



CHANGED TIMES 165 

matter; there was nobody so fancy-free. If yon 
had taken the maps away while we were studying 
them most intently, it is a fair bet whether we 
might not have continued to study the table with 
the same delight. 

About one thing w^e were mightily taken up, 
and that was eating. I think I made a god of my 
belly. I remember dwelling in imagination upon 
this or that dish till my mouth watered ; and long 
before we got in for the night my appetite was a 
clamant, instant annoyance. Sometimes we pad- 
dled alongside for awhile and whetted each other 
with gastronomical fancies as we went. Cake and 
sherry, a homely refection, but not within reach 
upon the Oise, trotted through my head for many 
a mile; and once, as we were approaching Ver- 
berie, the Cigarette brought my heart into m}^ 
mouth by the suggestion of oyster patties and 
Sauterne. 

I suppose none of us recognise the great part 
that is played in life by eating and drinking. The 
appetite is so imperious that w^e can stomach the 
least interesting viands, and pass off a dinner hour 



i66 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

thankfully enough on bread and water; just as 
there are men who must read something, if it were 
only Bradshaw's Guide. But there is a romance 
about the matter, after all. Probably the table 
has more devotees than love; and I am sure that 
food is much more generally entertaining than 
scenery. Do you give in, as Walt Whitman would 
say, that you are any the less immortal for that? 
The true materialism is to be ashamed of what 
we are. To detect the flavour of an olive is no less 
a piece of human perfection than to find beauty 
in the colours of the sunset. 

Canoeing was easy work. To dip the paddle at 
the proper inclination, now right, now left; to 
keep the head down stream; to empty the little 
pool that gathered in the lap of the apron ; to 
screw up the eyes against the glittering sparkles 
of sun upon the water; or now and again to pass 
below the whistling tow-rope of the Deo Gratias 
of Conde, or Fotir Sons of Aymon, — there was 
not much art in that; certain silly muscles man- 
aged it between sleep and waking; and meanwhile 
the brain had a whole holiday, and went to sleep. 



CHANGED TIMES 167 

We took in at a glance the larger features of the 
scene, and beheld, with half an eye, bloused fishers 
and dabbling washerwomen on the bank. Now 
and again we might be half wakened by some 
church spire, by a leaping fish, or by a trail of river 
grass that clung about the paddle and had to be 
plucked off and thrown away. But these lumi- 
nous intervals w^ere only partially luminous. A 
little more of us w^as called into action, but never 
the whole. The central bureau of nerves, what in 
some moods we call Ourselves, enjoyed its holiday 
without disturbance, like a Government Of^ce. 
The great wheels of intelligence turned idly in 
the head, like fly-wheels, grinding no grist. I have 
gone on for half an hour at a time, counting my 
strokes and forgetting the hundreds. I flatter my- 
self the beasts that perish could not underbid that, 
as a low form of consciousness. And what a pleas- 
ure it was! What a hearty, tolerant temper did it 
bring about ! There is nothing captious about a 
man who has attained to this, the one possible 
apotheosis in life, the Apotheosis of Stupidity; and 



i68 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

There was one odd piece of practical meta- 
physics which accompanied what I may cah the 
depth, if I must not call it the intensity, of my 
abstraction. What philosophers call mc and not 
me, ego and noji ego, preoccupied me whether I 
would or no. There was less me and more not 
me than I was accustomed to expect. I looked 
on upon somebody else, who managed the pad- 
dling; I was aware of somebody else's feet against 
the stretcher; my own body seemed to have no 
more intimate relation to me than the canoe, or 
the river, or the river banks. Nor this alone : 
something inside my mind, a part of my brain, a 
province of my proper being, had thrown off alle- 
giance and set up for itself, or perhaps for the 
somebody else who did the paddling. I had 
dwindled into quite a little thing in a corner of 
myself. I was isolated in my own skull. Thoughts 
presented themselves unbidden; they were not 
my thoughts, they were plainly some one else's; 
and I considered them like a part of the landscape. 
I take it, in short, that I was about as near Nirvana 
as would be convenient in practical life; and, if 



CHANGED TIMES 169 

this be so, I make the Buddhists my sincere 
compHments ; 't is an agreeable state, not very 
consistent with mental brilliancy, not exactly prof- 
itable in a money point of view, but very calm, 
golden, and incurious, and one that sets a man 
superior to alarms. It may be best figured by 
supposing yourself to get dead drunk, and yet 
keep sober to enjoy it. I have a notion that open- 
air labourers must spend a large portion of their 
days in this ecstatic stupor, which explains their 
high composure and endurance. A pity to go to 
the expense of laudanum when here is a better 
paradise for nothing ! 

This frame of mind was the great exploit of our 
voyage, take it all in all. It was the farthest piece 
of travel accomplished. Indeed, it lies so far from 
beaten paths of language that I despair of getting 
the reader into sympathy with the smiling, com- 
placent idiocy of my condition ; when ideas came 
and went like motes in a sunbeam ; when trees and 
church spires along the bank surged up from time 
to time into my notice, like solid objects through 
a rolling cloud-land; when the rhythmical swish 



lyo AN INLAND VOYAGE 

of boat and paddle in the water became a cradle- 
song to lull my thoughts asleep; when a piece of 
mud on the deck was sometimes an intolerable eye- 
sore, and sometimes quite a companion for me, 
and the object of pleased consideration; and all 
the time, with the river running and the shores 
changing upon either hand, I kept counting my 
strokes and forgetting the hundreds, the happiest 
animal in France. 



DOWN THE OISE 

CHURCH INTERIORS 

WE made our first stage below Compiegne 
to Pont Sainte-Maxence. I was abroad 
a little after six the next morning. The 
air was biting and smelt of frost. In an open 
place a score of women wrangled together over 
the day's market; and the noise of their negotia- 
tion sounded thin and querulous, like that of 
sparrows on a winter's morning. The rare pas- 
sengers blew into their hands, and shuffled in 
their wooden shoes to set the blood agog. The 
streets were full of icy shadow, although the 
chimneys were smoking overhead in golden sun- 
shine. If you wake early enough at this season 
of the year, you may get up in December to 
break your fast in June. 

I found my way to the church, for there is 
always something to see about a church, whether 



172 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

living worshippers or dead men's tombs; you find 
there the deadhest earnest, and the hollowest de- 
ceit; and even where it is not a piece of history, 
it will be certain to leak out some contemporary 
gossip. It was scarcely so cold in the church as 
it was without, but it looked colder. The white 
nave was positively arctic to the eye; and the 
tawdriness of a continental altar looked more for- 
lorn than usual in the solitude and the bleak air. 
Two priests sat in the chancel reading and wait- 
ing penitents; and out in the nave one very old 
woman was engaged in her devotions. It was a 
wonder how she w^as able to pass her beads when 
healthy young people were breathing in their 
palms and slapping their chest ; but though this 
concerned me, I was yet more dispirited by the 
nature of her exercises. She went from chair 
to chair, from altar to altar, circumnavigating the 
church. To each shrine she dedicated an ecjual 
number of beads and an equal length of time. 
Like a prudent capitalist with a somewhat cyni- 
cal view of the commercial prospect, she desired 
to place her supplications in a great variety of 



DOWN THE OISE 173 

heavenly securities. She would risk nothing on 
the credit of any single intercessor. Out of the 
whole company of saints and angels, not one but 
was to suppose himself her champion elect against 
the Great Assizes! I could only think of it as 
a dull, transparent jugglery, based upon uncon- 
scious unbelief. 

She was as dead an old woman as ever I saw; 
no more than bone and parchment, curiously put 
together. Her eyes, with which she interrogated 
mine, were vacant of sense. It depends on what 
you call seeing, whether you might not call her 
blind. Perhaps she had known love : perhaps 
borne children, suckled them, and given them pet 
names. But now that was all gone by, and had 
left her neither happier nor wiser; and the best 
she could do with her mornings was to come up 
here into the cold church and juggle for a slice 
of heaven. It was not without a gulp that I es- 
caped into the streets and the keen morning air. 
Morning? why, how tired of it she would be 
before night! and if she did not sleep, how then? 
It is fortunate that not many of us are brought 



174 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

up publicly to justify our lives at the bar of 
threescore years and ten; fortunate that such a 
number are knocked opportunely on the head in 
what they call the flower of their years, and go 
away to suffer for their follies in private some- 
where else. Otherwise, between sick children and 
discontented old folk, we might be put out of all 
conceit of life. 

I had need of all my cerebral hygiene during 
that day's paddle: the old devotee stuck in my 
throat sorely. But I was soon in the seventh 
heaven of stupidity; and knew nothing but that 
somebody was paddling a canoe, while I w^as 
counting his strokes and forgetting the hundreds. 
I used sometimes to be afraid I should remem- 
ber the hundreds; which would have made a toil 
of a pleasure; but the terror was chimerical, they 
went out of my mind by enchantment, and I 
knew no more than the man in the moon about 
my only occupation. 

At Creil, where we stopped to lunch, we left 
the canoes in another floating lavatory, which, 
as it was high noon, was packed with washer- 



DOWN THE OISE 175 

women, red-handed and loud-voiced; and they 
and their broad jokes are about all I remember 
of the place. I could look up my history books, 
if you were very anxious, and tell you a date or 
two; for it 'figured rather largely in the Eng- 
lish wars. But I prefer to mention a girls' board- 
ing-school, which had an interest for us because 
it was a girls' boarding-school, and because we 
imagined we had rather an interest for it. At 
least, there were the girls about the garden ; and 
here were we on the river; and there was more 
than one handkerchief waved as we went by. It 
caused quite a stir in my heart; and yet how 
we should have wearied and despised each other, 
these girls and I, if we had been introduced at 
a croquet party ! But this is a fashion I love : 
to kiss the hand or wave a handkerchief to 
people I shall never see again, to play with pos- 
sibility, and knock in a peg for fancy to hang 
upon. It gives the traveller a jog, reminds him 
that he is not a traveller everywhere, and that 
his journey is no more than a siesta by the way 
on the real march of life. 



176 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

The church at Creil was a nondescript place in 
the inside, splashed with gaudy lights from the 
windows, and picked out with medallions of the 
Dolorous Way. But there was one oddity, in 
the way of an ex voto, which pleased me hugely : 
a faithful model of a canal boat, swung from the 
vault, with a written aspiration that God should 
conduct the Saint Nicholas of Creil to a good 
haven. The thing was neatly executed, and would 
have made the delight of a party of boys on the 
water-side. But what tickled me was the gravity 
of the peril to be conjured. You might hang up 
the model of a sea-going ship, and welcome: one 
that is to plough a furrow round the world, and 
visit the tropic or the frosty poles, runs dangers 
that are well worth a candle and a mass. But 
the Saint Nicholas of Creil, which was to be 
tugged for some ten years by patient draught 
horses, in a weedy canal, with the poplars chat- 
tering overhead, and the skipper whistling at the 
tiller; which was to do all its errands in green 
inland places, and never got out of sight of a 
village belfry in all its cruising; why, you would 



DOWN THE OISE 177 

have thought if anything could be done without 
the intervention of Providence, it would be that! 
But perhaps the skipper was a humourist: or 
perhaps a prophet, reminding people of the seri- 
ousness of life by this preposterous token. 

At Creil, as at Noyon, St. Joseph seemed a 
favourite saint on the score of punctuality. Day 
and hour can be specified; and grateful people 
do not fail to specify them on a votive tablet, 
when prayers have been punctually and neatly 
answered. Whenever time is a consideration, 
St. Joseph is the proper intermediary. I took 
a sort of pleasure in observing the vogue he had 
in France, for the good man plays a very small 
part in my religion at home. Yet I could not 
help fearing that, where the saint is so much 
commended for exactitude, he will be expected 
to be very grateful for his tablet. 

This is foolishness to us Protestants; and not 
of great importance anyway. Whether people's 
gratitude for the good gifts that come to them 
be wisely conceived or dutifully expressed is a 
secondary matter, after all, so long as they feel 



178 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

gratitude. The true ignorance is when a man 
does not know that he has received a good gift, 
or begins to imagine that he has got it for him- 
self. The self-made man is the funniest wind- 
bag after all! There is a marked difference 
between decreeing light in chaos, and lighting the 
gas in a metropolitan back-parlour with a box of 
patent matches; and, do what we will, there is 
always something made to our hand, if it were 
only our fingers. 

But there was something worse than foolish- 
ness placarded in Creil Church. The Association 
of the Living Rosary (of which I had never pre- 
viously heard) is responsible for that. This as- 
sociation was founded, according to the printed 
advertisement, by a brief of Pope Gregory Six- 
teenth, on the 17th of January, 1832: according 
to a coloured bas-relief, it seems to have been 
founded, some time or other, by the Virgin giv- 
ing one rosary to St. Dominic, and the Infant 
Saviour giving another to St. Catherine of Sienna. 
Pope Gregory is not so imposing, but he is nearer 
hand. I could not distinctly make out whether the 



DOWN THE OISE 179 

association was entirely devotional, or had an eye 
to good works ; at least it is highly organised : 
the names of fourteen matrons and misses were 
filled in for each week of the month as associates, 
with one other, generally a married woman, at 
the top for Zclatrice, the choragus of the band. 
Indulgences, plenary and partial, follow on the 
performance of the duties of the association. 
" The partial indulgences are attached to the reci- 
tation of the rosary." On " the recitation of the 
required dizaine,'' a partial indulgence promptly 
follows. When people serve the kingdom of 
Heaven with a pass-book in their hands, I should 
always be afraid lest they should carry the same 
commercial spirit into their dealings with their 
fellow-men, which would make a sad and sordid 
business of this life. 

There is one more article, however, of happier 
import. " All these indulgences," it appeared, 
'' are applicable to souls in purgatory." For God's 
sake, ye ladies of Creil, apply them all to the 
souls in purgatory without delay! Burns would 
take no hire for his last songs, preferring to 



i8o AN INLAND VOYAGE 

serve his country out of unmixed love. Suppose 
you were to imitate the exciseman, mesdames, 
and even if the souls in purgatory were not greatly 
bettered, some souls in Creil upon the Oise would 
find themselves none the worse either here or 
hereafter. 

I cannot help wondering, as I transcribe these 
notes, whether a Protestant born and bred is in 
a fit state to understand these signs, and do them 
what justice they deserve; and I cannot help an- 
swering that he is not. They cannot look so 
merely ugly and mean to the faithful as they do 
to me. I see that as clearly as a proposition in 
Euclid. For these believers are neither weak nor 
wicked. They can put up their tablet commend- 
ing St. Joseph for his despatch as if he were still 
a village carpenter ; they can " recite the required 
dizainey" and metaphorically pocket the indulgences 
as if they had done a job for heaven ; and then 
they can .go out and look down unabashed upon 
this wonderful river flowing by, and up without 
confusion at the pin-point stars, which are them- 
selves great worlds full of flowing rivers greater 



DOWN THE OISE i8i 

than the Oise. I see it as plainly, I say, as a 
proposition in Euclid, that my Protestant mind 
has missed the point, and that there goes with 
these deformities some higher and more religious 
spirit than I dream. 

I wonder if other people would make the same 
allowances for me? Like the ladies of Creil, hav- 
ing recited my rosary of toleration, I look for 
my indulgence on the spot. 



PRECY AND THE MARIONETTES 

WE made Precy about sundown. The plain 
is rich with tufts of poplar. In a wide, 
luminous curve the Oise lay under the 
hillside. A faint mist began to rise and confound 
the different distances together. There was not 
a sound audible but that of the sheep-bells in 
some meadows by the river, and the creaking of 
a cart down the long road that descends the hill. 
The villas in their gardens, the shops along the 
street, all seemed to have been deserted the day 
before; and I felt inclined to walk discreetly as 
one feels in a silent forest. All of a sudden we 
came round a corner, and there, in a little green 
round the church, was a bevy of girls in Parisian 
costumes playing croquet. Their laughter and the 
hollow sound of ball and mallet made a cheery 
stir in the neighbourhood; and the look of these 
slim figures, all corseted and ribboned, produced 



PRECY 183 

an answerable disturbance in our hearts. We were 
within sniff of Paris, it seemed. And here were 
females of our own species playing croquet, just 
as if Precy had been a place in real life instead 
of a stage in the fairyland of travel. For, to 
be frank, the peasant-woman is scarcely to be 
counted as a woman at all, and after having 
passed by such a succession of people in petti- 
coats digging, and hoeing, and making dinner, 
this company of coquettes under arms made quite 
a surprising feature in the landscape, and con- 
vinced us at once of being fallible males. 

The inn at Precy is the worst inn in France. 
Not even in Scotland have I found worse fare. 
It was kept by a brother and sister, neither of 
whom was out of their teens. The sister, so to 
speak, prepared a meal for us; and the brother, 
who had been tippling, came in and brought with 
him a tipsy butcher, to entertain us as we ate. 
We found pieces of loo-warm pork among the 
salad, and pieces of unknown yielding substance 
in the ragout. The butcher entertained us with 
pictures of Parisian life, with which he professed 



i84 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

himself well acquainted; the brother sitting the 
while on the edge of the billiard table, toppling 
precariously, and sucking the stump of a cigar. 
In the midst of these diversions bang went a drum 
past the house, and a hoarse voice began issuing 
a proclamation. It was a man with marionettes 
announcing a performance for that evening. 

He had set up his caravan and lighted his 
candles on another part of the girls' croquet 
green, under one of those open sheds which are 
so common in France to shelter markets ; and 
he and his wife, by the time we strolled up there, 
were trying to keep order with the audience. 

It was the most absurd contention. The show- 
people had set out a certain number of benches ; 
and all who sat upon them were to pay a couple 
of sous for the accommodation. They were always 
quite full — a bumper house — as long as noth- 
ing was going forward; but let the show-woman 
appear with an eye to a collection, and at the 
first rattle of the tambourine the audience slipped 
off the seats and stood round on the outside, with 
their hands in their pockets. It certainly would 



PRECY 185 

have tried an angel's temper. The showman 
roared from the proscenium ; he had been all 
over France, and nowhere, nowhere, *' not even 
on the borders of Germany," had he met with 
such misconduct. Such thieves, and rogues, and 
rascals as he called them ! And now and again 
the wife issued on another round, and added her 
shrill quota to the tirade. I remarked here, as 
elsewhere, how far more copious is the female 
mind in the material of insult. The audience 
laughed in high good-humour over the man's 
declamations; but they bridled and cried aloud 
under the woman's pungent sallies. She picked 
out the sore points. She had the honour of the 
village at her mercy. Voices answered her an- 
grily out of the crowd, and received a smarting 
retort for their trouble. A couple of old ladies 
beside me, who had duly paid for their seats, 
waxed very red and indignant, and discoursed 
to each other audibly about the impudence of these 
mountebanks ; but as soon as the show-woman 
caught a whisper of this she was down upon 
them with a swoop; if mesdames could persuade 



i86 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

their neighbours to act with common honesty, the 
mountebanks, she assured them, would be pohte 
enough; mesdames had probably had their bowl 
of soup, and, perhaps, a glass of wine that even- 
ing; the mountebanks, also, had a taste for soup, 
and did not choose to have their little earnings 
stolen from them before their eyes. Once, things 
came as far as a brief personal encounter between 
the showman and some lads, in which the former 
went down as readily as one of his own mari- 
onettes to a peal of jeering laughter. 

I was a good deal astonished at this scene, be- 
cause I am pretty well acquainted with the ways 
of French strollers, more or less artistic; and 
have always found them singularly pleasing. Any 
stroller must be dear to the right-thinking heart; 
if it were only as a living protest against offices 
and the mercantile spirit, and as something to re- 
mind us that life is not by necessity the kind of 
thing we generally make it. Even a German band, 
if you see it leaving town in the early morning 
for a campaign in country places, among trees and 
meadows, has a romantic flavour for the imagina- 



PRECY 187 

tion. There is nobody under thirty so dead but 
his heart will stir a little at sight of a gipsies' 
camp. '' We are not cotton-spinners all " ; or, at 
least, not all through. There is some life in 
humanity yet; and youth will now and again 
find a brave word to say in dispraise of riches, 
and throw up a situation to go strolling with a 
knapsack. 

An Englishman has always special facilities for 
intercourse with French gymnasts; for England 
is the natural home of gymnasts. This or that 
fellow^ in his tights and spangles, is sure to know 
a word or two of English, to have drunk English 
aff-n-aff, and, perhaps, performed in an English 
music hall. He is a countryman of mine by pro- 
fession. He leaps like the Belgian boating-men 
to the notion that I must be an athlete myself. 

But the gymnast is not my favourite; he has 
little or no tincture of the artist in his composi- 
tion; his soul is small and pedestrian, for the 
most part, since his profession makes no call upon 
it, and does not accustom him to high ideas. But 
if a man is only so much of an actor that he can 



i88 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

stumble through a farce, he is made free of a 
new order of thoughts. He has something else 
to think about beside the money-box. He has a 
pride of his own, and, what is of far more im- 
portance, he has an aim before him that he can 
never quite attain. He has gone upon a pilgrim- 
age that will last him his life long, because there 
is no end to it short of perfection. He will bet- 
ter himself a little day by day; of, even if he 
has given up the attempt, he will always remem- 
ber that once upon a time he had conceived this 
high ideal, that once upon a time he fell in love 
with a star. '' 'T is better to have loved and lost." 
Although the moon should have nothing to say 
to Endymion, although he should settle down with 
Audrey and feed pigs, do you not think he would 
move with a better grace and cherish higher 
thoughts to the end? The louts he meets at 
church never had a fancy above Audrey's snood; 
but there is a reminiscence in Endymion's heart 
that, like a spice, keeps it fresh and haughty. 

To be even one of the outskirters of art leaves 
a fine stamp on a man's countenance. I remem- 



PRECY 189 

ber once dining with a party in the inn at Chateau 
Landon. Most of them were unmistakable bag- 
men; others well-to-do peasantry; but there was 
one young fellow in a blouse, whose face stood 
out from among the rest surprisingly. It looked 
more finished; more of the spirit looked out 
through it; it had a living, expressive air, and 
you could see that his eyes took things in. My 
companion and I wondered greatly who and what 
he could be. It was fair time in Chateau Landon, 
and when we went along to the booths we had 
our question answered; for there was our friend 
busily fiddling for the peasants to caper to. He 
was a wandering violinist. 

A troop of strollers once came to the inn where 
I was staying, in the department of Seine et 
Marne. There were a father and mother; two 
daughters, brazen, blowsy hussies, who sang and 
acted, without an idea of how to set about either; 
and a dark young man, like a tutor, a recalcitrant 
house-painter, who sang and acted not amiss. The 
mother was the genius of the party, so far as 
genius can be spoken of with regard to such a 



I90 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

pack of incompetent humbugs ; and her husband 
could not find words to express his admiration for 
her comic countryman. " You should see my old 
woman," said he, and nodded his beery counte- 
nance. One night they performed in the stable- 
yard with flaring lamps : a wretched exhibition, 
coldly looked upon by a village audience. Next 
night, as soon as the lamps were lighted, there 
came a plump of rain, and they had to sweep 
away their baggage as fast as possible, and make 
off to the barn, where they harboured, cold, wet, 
and supperless. In the morning a dear friend of 
mine, who has as warm a heart for strollers as I 
have myself, made a little collection, and sent it 
by my hands to comfort them for their disap- 
pointment. I gave it to the father; he thanked 
me cordially, and we drank a cup together in the 
kitchen, talking of roads and audiences, and hard 
times. 

When I was going, up got my old stroller, and 
off with his hat. " I am afraid," said he, '' that 
Monsieur will think me altogether a beggar; but 
I have another demand to make upon him." I 



PRECY 191 

began to hate him on the spot. ** We play again 
to-night," he went on. "Of course I shall re- 
fuse to accept any more money from Monsieur 
and his friends, who have been already so liberal. 
But our programme of to-night is something truly 
creditable; and I cling to the idea that Monsieur 
will honour us with his presence." And then, 
with a shrug and a smile : " Monsieur understands, 
— the vanity of an artist ! " Save the mark ! The 
vanity of an artist ! That is the kind of thing 
that reconciles me to life: a ragged, tippling, in- 
competent old rogue, with the manners of a gen- 
tleman and the vanity of an artist, to keep up his 
self-respect! 

But the man after my own heart is M. de 
Vauversin. It is nearly two years since I saw^ 
him first, and indeed I hope I may see him often 
again. Here is his first programme as I found 
it on the breakfast-table, and have kept it ever 
since as a relic of bright days : 

"Mesdames et Messieurs, 

"Mademoiselle Ferrario et M. de Vauversin auront Thon- 
neur de chanter ce soir les morceaux suivants. 



192 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

" Mademoiselle Ferrario chantera — Mignon — Oiseaux 
Legers — France — Des Fran^ais dorment la — le chateau 
bleu — Oil voulez-vous aller ? 

"M.de Vauversin — Madame Fontaine et M. Robinet — 
Les plongeurs h cheval — Le Marl mecontent — Tais-toi, 
gamin — Mon voisin roriginal — Heureux comme ca — 
comme on est trompe." 

They made a stage at one end of the salle-d- 
manger. And what a sight it was to see M. de 
Vauversin, w^ith a cigarette in his mouth, twang- 
ing a guitar, and following Mademoiselle Ferra- 
rio's eyes with the obedient, kindly look of a 
dog! The entertainment wound up with a tom- 
bola, or auction of lottery tickets : an admirable 
amusement, with all the excitement of gambling, 
and no hope of gain to make you ashamed of 
your eagerness ; for there, all is loss ; you make 
haste to be out of pocket ; it is a competition who 
shall lose most money for the benefit of M. de 
Vauversin and Mademoiselle Ferrario. 

M. de Vauversin is a small man, with a great 
head of black hair, a vivacious and engaging air, 
and a smile that would be delightful if he had 
better teeth. He was once an actor in the Chate- 



PRECY 193 

let; but he contracted a nervous affection from 
the heat and glare of the foot-hghts, which un- 
httcd him for the stage. At this crisis Made- 
moisehe Ferrario, otherwise Mademoiselle Rita of 
the Alcazar, agreed to share his wandering for- 
tunes. '' I could never forget the generosity of 
that lady," said he. He wears trousers so tight 
that it has long been a problem to all who knew 
him how he manages to get in and out of them. 
He sketches a little in water-colours, he writes 
verses ; he is the most patient of fishermen, and 
spent long days at the bottom of the inn-garden 
fruitlessly dabbling a line in the clear river. 

You should hear him recounting his experiences 
over a bottle of wine; such a pleasant vein of 
talk as he has, w^ith a ready smile at his own 
mishaps, and every now and then a sudden grav- 
ity, like a man who should hear the surf roar 
while he was telling the perils of the deep. For 
it was no longer ago than last night, perhaps, that 
the receipts only amounted to a franc and a half 
to cover three francs of railway fare and two of 
board and lodging. The Maire, a man worth a 



194 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

million of money, sat in the front seat, repeatedly 
applauding Mademoiselle Ferrario, and yet gave 
no more than three sous the whole evening. Local 
authorities look with such an evil eye upon the 
strolling artist. Alas! I know it well, who have 
been myself taken for one, and pitilessly incar- 
cerated on the strength of the misapprehension. 
Once, M. de Vauversin visited a commissary of 
police for permission to sing. The commissary, 
who was smoking at his ease, politely doffed his hat 
upon the singer's entrance. " Mr. Commissary," 
he began, "I am an artist." And on went the 
commissary's hat again. No courtesy for the 
companions of Apollo ! " They are as degraded 
as that," said M. de Vauversin, with a sweep of 
his cigarette. 

But what pleased me most was one outbreak 
of his, when we had been talking all the evening 
of the rubs, indignities, and pinchings of his wan- 
dering life. Some one said it would be better to 
have a million of money down, and Mademoiselle 
Ferrario admitted that she would prefer that 
mightily. ^^ Eh hicn, mot non; — not I," cried 



PRECY 195 

De Vauversin, striking the table with his hand. 
" If any one is a failure in the world, is it not I ? I 
had an art, in which I have done things well, — 
as well as some, better, perhaps, than others; and 
now it is closed against me. I must go about the 
country gathering coppers and singing nonsense. 
Do you think I regret my life? Do you think 
I would rather be a fat burgess, like a calf? Not 
I! I have had moments when I have been ap- 
plauded on the boards : I think nothing of that : 
but I have known in my own mind sometimes, 
when I had not a clap from the whole house, that 
I had found a true intonation, or an exact and 
speaking gesture; and then, messieurs, I have 
known what pleasure was, what it was to do a 
thing well, what it was to be an artist. And to 
know what art is, is to have an interest for ever, 
such as no burgess can find in his petty concerns. 
Tcncz, messieurs, jc vais voiis le dire, — it is like 
a religion." 

Such, making some allowance for the tricks of 
memory and the inaccuracies of translation, was 
the profession of faith of M. de Vauversin. I 



196 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

have given him his own name, lest any other 
wanderer should come across him, with his guitar 
and cigarette, and Mademoiselle Ferrario; for 
should not all the world delight to honour this 
unfortunate and loyal follower of the Muses? 
May Apollo send him rhymes hitherto undreamed 
of; may the river be no longer scanty of her 
silver fishes to his lure; may the cold not pinch 
him on long winter rides, nor the village jack-in- 
office affront him with unseemly manners; and 
may he never miss Mademoiselle Ferrario from 
his side, to follow with his dutiful eyes and ac- 
company on the guitar! 

The marionettes made a very dismal entertain- 
ment. They performed a piece called Pyramiis 
and Thisbe, in five mortal acts, and all written 
in Alexandrines fully as long as the performers. 
One marionette was the king ; another the wicked 
counsellor; a third, credited with exceptional 
beauty, represented Thisbe; and then there were 
guards, and obdurate fathers, and walking gen- 
tlemen. Nothing particular took place during the 
two or three acts that I sat out; but you will 



PRECY 197 

be pleased to learn that the unities were properly 
respected, and the whole piece, with one excep- 
tion, moved in harmony with classical rules. That 
exception was the comic countryman, a lean mario- 
nette in wooden shoes, who spoke in prose and 
in a broad patois much appreciated by the audi- 
ence. He took unconstitutional liberties wath the 
person of his sovereign ; kicked his fellow-mario- 
nettes in the mouth with his wooden shoes, and 
whenever none of the versifying suitors were 
about, made love to Thisbe on his own account 
in comic prose. 

This fellow's evolutions, and the little prologue, 
in which the showman made a humourous eulo- 
gium of his troop, praising their indifference to 
applause and hisses, and their single devotion to 
their art, were the only circumstances in the whole 
affair that you could fancy would so much as raise 
a smile. But the villagers of Precy seemed de- 
lighted. Indeed, so long as a thing is an exhibi- 
tion, and you pay to see it, it is nearly certain to 
amuse. If we were charged so much a head for 
sunsets, or if God sent round a drum before the 



198 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

hawthorns came in flower, what work should we 
not make about their beauty! But these things, 
Hke good companions, stupid people early cease 
to observe; and the Abstract Bagman tittups past 
in his spring gig, and is positively not aware of 
the flowers along the lane, or the scenery of the 
weather overhead. 



BACK TO THE V/ORLD 

OF the next two days' sail little remains 
in my mind, and nothing whatever in 
my note-book. The river streamed on 
steadily through pleasant river-side landscapes. 
Washerwomen in blue dresses, fishers in blue 
blouses, diversified the green banks ; and the rela- 
tion of the two colours was like that of the flower 
and the leaf in the forget-me-not. A symphony in 
forget-me-not; I think Theophile Gautier might 
thus have characterised that two days' panorama. 
The sky was blue and cloudless; and the sliding 
surface of the river held up, in smooth places, a 
mirror to the heaven and the shores. The washer- 
women hailed us laughingly; and the noise of 
trees and water made an accompaniment to our 
dozing thoughts, as we fleeted down the stream. 

The great volume, the indefatigable purpose of 
the river, held the mind in chain. It seemed now 



200 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

so sure of its end, so strong and easy in its gait, 
like a grown man full of determination. The surf 
was roaring for it on the sands of Havre. For 
my ow^n part slipping along this moving thorough- 
fare in my fiddle-case of a canoe, I also was be- 
ginning to grow aweary for my ocean. To the 
civilised man there must come, sooner or later, 
a desire for civilisation. I was weary of dipping 
the paddle ; I was weary of living on the skirts of 
life; I wMshed to be in the thick of it once more; 
I wished to get to work ; I wished to meet people 
who understood my own speech, and could meet 
with me on equal terms, as a man, and no longer 
as a curiosity. 

And so a letter at Pontoise decided us, and we 
drew up our keels for the last time out of that 
river of Oise that had faithfully piloted them, 
through rain and sunshine, for so long. For so 
many miles had this fleet and footless beast of 
burthen charioted our fortunes that we turned our 
back upon it with a sense of separation. We had a 
long detour out of the world, but now we were 
back in the familiar places, where life itself makes 



BACK TO THE WORLD 201 

all the running, and we are carried to meet adven- 
ture without a stroke of the paddle. Now we 
were to return, like the voyager in the play, and 
see what rearrangements fortune had perfected 
the while in our surroundings ; what surprises stood 
ready-made for us at home ; and whither and how 
far the world had voyaged in our absence. You 
may paddle all day long ; but it is when you come 
back at nightfall, and look in at the familiar room, 
that you find Love or Death awaiting you beside 
the stove; and the most beautiful adventures are 
not those we go to seek. 



EPILOGUE TO "AN INLAND 
VOYAGE" 



EPILOGUE TO "AN INLAND 
VOYAGE" 

THE country where they journeyed, that 
green, breezy valley of the Loing, is one 
very attractive to cheerful and solitary 
people. The weather was superb; all night it 
thundered and lightened, and the rain fell in 
sheets ; by day, the heavens were cloudless, the 
sun fervent, the air vigorous and pure. They 
walked separate : the Cigarette plodding behind 
with some philosophy, the lean AretJiusa posting 
on ahead. Thus each enjoyed his own reflections 
by the way ; each had perhaps time to tire of them 
before he met his comrade at the designated inn ; 
and the pleasures of society and solitude combined 
to fill the day. The Arethiisa carried in his 
knapsack the works of Charles of Orleans, and em- 
ployed some of the hours of travel in the concoc- 

Originally published in " Across the Plains." 



2o6 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

tion of English roundels. In this path, he must 
thus have preceded Mr. Lang, Mr. Dobson, Mr. 
Henley, and all contemporary roundeleers ; but for 
good reasons, he will be the last to publish the 
result. The Cigarette walked burthened with a 
volume of Michelet. And both these books, it will 
be seen, played a part in the subsequent adventure. 
The Arethusa was unwisely dressed. He is no 
precisian in attire; but by all accounts, he was 
never so ill-inspired as on that tramp; having set 
forth indeed, upon a moment's notice, from the 
most unfashionable spot in Europe, Barbizon. On 
his head, he wore a smoking-cap of Indian work, 
the gold lace pitifully frayed and tarnished. A 
flannel shirt of an agreeable dark hue, which the 
satirical called black; a light tweed coat made 
by a good English tailor; ready-made cheap linen 
trousers and leathern gaiters completed his array. 
In person, he is exceptionally lean; and his face 
is not like those of happier mortals, a certificate. 
For years he could not pass a frontier or visit a 
bank without suspicion; the police everywhere, 
but in his native city, looked askance upon him; 



EPILOGUE 207 

and (though I am sure it will not be credited) he 
is actually denied admittance to the casino of 
Monte Carlo. If you will imagine him, dressed 
as above, stooping under his knapsack, walking 
nearly five miles an hour with the folds of the 
ready-made trousers fluttering about his spindle 
shanks, and still looking eagerly round him as 
if in terror of pursuit — the figure, when realised, 
is far from reassuring. When Villon journeyed 
(perhaps by the same pleasant valley) to his exile 
at Roussillon, I wonder if he had not something 
of the same appearance. Something of the same 
preoccupation he had beyond a doubt, for he too 
must have tinkered verses as he walked, with more 
success than his successor. And if he had any- 
thing like the same inspiring weather, the same 
nights of uproar, men in armour rolling and re- 
sounding down the stairs of heaven, the rain hiss- 
ing on the village streets, the wild bull's-eye of 
the storm flashing all night long into the bare 
inn-chamber — the same sweet return of day, the 
same unfathomable blue of noon, the same high- 
coloured, halcyon eves — and above all if he had 



2o8 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

anything like as good a comrade, anything Hke as 
keen a rehsh for what he saw, and what he ate, 
and the rivers that he bathed in, and the rubbish 
that he wrote, I would exchange estates to-day 
with the poor exile, and count myself a gainer. 

But there was another point of similarity be- 
tween the two journeys, for which the Arethusa 
was to pay dear : both were gone upon in days 
of incomplete security. It was not long after 
the Franco-Prussian war. Swiftly as men for- 
get, that country-side was still alive with tales 
of uhlans, and outlying sentries, and hairbreadth 
'scapes from the ignominious cord, and pleasant 
momentary friendships between invader and in- 
vaded. A year, at the most two years later, you 
might have tramped all that country over and not 
heard one anecdote. And a year or two later, you 
would — if you were a rather ill-looking young 
man in nondescript array — have gone your 
rounds in greater safety; for along with more 
interesting matter, the Prussian spy would have 
somewhat faded from men's imaginations. 

For all that, our voyager had got beyond Cha- 



EPILOGUE 209 

teau Renard before he was conscious of arousing 
wonder. On the road between that place and 
Chatillon-sur-Loing, however, he encountered a 
rural postman; they fell together in talk, and 
spoke of a variety of subjects; but through one 
and all, the postman was still visibly preoccupied, 
and his eyes were faithful to the Arcthusa's knap- 
sack. At last, with mysterious roguishness, he 
inquired what it contained, and on being an- 
swered, shook his head with kindly incredulity. 
'' Noil/' said he, '' non, vous ave^ des portraits." 
And then with a languishing appeal, " Voyons, 
show me the portraits ! " It was some little while 
before the Arethusa, with a shout of laughter, rec- 
ognised his drift. By portraits he meant indecent 
photographs; and in the Arethusa, an austere and 
rising author, he thought to have identified a porno- 
graphic colporteur. When countryfolk in France 
have made up their minds as to a person's calling, 
argument is fruitless. Along all the rest of the 
way, the postman piped and fluted meltingly to get 
a sight of the collection; now he would upbraid, 

now he would reason — " Voyons, I will tell no- 

14 



2IO AN INLAND VOYAGE 

body " ; then he tried corruption, and insisted on 
paying for a glass of wine; and, at last, when 
their ways separated — '' Non," said he, '' ce n'cst 
pas bicn dc voire part. non, ce n'est pas hicn." 
And shaking his head with quite a sentimental 
sense of injury, he departed unrefreshed. 

On certain little difficulties encountered by the 
Arethusa at Chatillon-sur-Loing, I have not space 
to dwell ; another Chatillon, of grislier memory, 
looms too near at hand. But the next day, in 
a certain hamlet called La Jussiere, he stopped to 
drink a glass of syrup in a very poor, bare drinking- 
shop. The hostess, a comely woman, suckling a 
child, examined the traveller with kindly and pity- 
ing eyes. '' You are not of this department? " she 
asked. The Arethusa told her he was English. 
*'Ah!" she said, surprised. "We have no Eng- 
lish. We have many Italians, however, and they 
do very well ; they do not complain of the people 
of hereabouts. An Englishman may do very well 
also; it will be something new." Here was a 
dark saying, over which the Arethusa pondered 
as he drank his grenadine; but when he rose and 



EPILOGUE 211 

asked what was to pay, the Hght came upon him in 
a flash. '' O , pour vous," rephed the landlady, '' a 
halfpenny ! '' Pour vous? By heaven, she took 
him for a beggar ! He paid his halfpenny, feeling 
that it were ungracious to correct her. But when 
he was forth again upon the road, he became vexed 
in spirit. The conscience is no gentleman, he is 
a rabbinical fellow ; and his conscience told him 
he had stolen the syrup. 

That night the travellers slept in Gien; the 
next day they passed the river and set forth 
(severally, as their custom was) on a short stage 
through the green plain upon the Berry side, to 
Chatillon-sur-Loire. It was the first day of the 
shooting; and the air rang with the report of fire- 
arms and the admiring cries of sportsmen. Over- 
head the birds were in consternation, wheeling- in 
clouds, settling and re-arising. And yet with all 
this bustle on either hand, the road itself lay soli- 
tary. The Arethusa smoked a pipe beside a mile- 
stone, and I remember he laid down very exactly 
all he was to do at Chatillon : how he was to enjoy 
a cold plunge, to change his shirt, and to await 



212 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

the Cigarette's arrival, in sublime inaction, by the 
margin of the Loire. Fired by these ideas, he 
pushed the more rapidly forward, and came, early 
in the afternoon and in a breathing heat, to the 
entering-in of that ill-fated town. Childe Roland 
to the dark tower came. 

A polite gendarme threw his shadow on the path. 

'"'' Monsieur est voyageiirf " he asked. 

And the Arethusa, strong in his innocence, for- 
getful of his vile attire, replied — I had almost 
said with gaiety : " So it would appear." 

" His papers are in order? " said the gendarme. 
And when the Arethusa with a slight change of 
voice, admitted he had none, he was informed 
(politely enough) that he must appear before the 
Commissary. 

The Commissary sat at a table in his bedroom, 
stripped to the shirt and trousers, but still copi- 
ously perspiring; and when he turned upon the 
prisoner a large meaningless countenance, that 
was (like Bardolph's) " all whelks and bubuckles," 
the dullest might have been prepared for grief. 
Here was a stupid man, sleepy with the heat and 



EPILOGUE 213 

fretful at the interruption, whom neither appeal 
nor argument could reach. 

The Commissary. You have no papers? 

The Arethusa. Not here. 

The Commissary. Why? 

The Arethusa. I have left them behind in 
my valise. 

The Commissary. You know, however, that 
it is forbidden to circulate without papers? 

The Arethusa. Pardon me : I am convinced 
of the contrary. I am here on my rights as an 
English subject by international treaty. 

The Commissary (zvith scorn). You call 
yourself an Englishman? 

The Arethusa. I do. 

The Commissary. Humph. — What is your 
trade ? 

The Arethusa. I am a Scotch Advocate. 

The Commissary (zvith singular annoyance). 
A Scotch advocate! Do you then pretend to sup- 
port yourself by that in this department? 

The Arethusa modestly disclaimed the preten- 
sion. The Commissary had scored a point. 



214 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

The Commissary. Why, then, do you travel? 

The Arethusa. I travel for pleasure. 

The Commissary (pointing to the knapsack, 
and zvith sublime incredulity). Avec gaf Voyez- 
vons, je siiis un honime intelligent ! (With that? 
Look here, I am a person of mtelligence!) 

The culprit remaining silent under this home 
thrust, the Commissary relished his triumph for 
awhile, and then demanded (like the postman, but 
with what different expectations!) to see the con- 
tents of the knapsack. And here the Arethusa, 
not yet sufficiently awake to his position, fell into 
a grave mistake. There was little or no furniture 
in the room except the Commissary's chair and 
table; and to facilitate matters, the Arethusa (with 
all the innocence on earth) leant the knapsack 
on a corner of the bed. The Commissary fairly 
bounded from his seat ; his face and neck flushed 
past purple, almost into blue; and he screamed 
to lay the desecrating object on the floor. 

The knapsack proved to contain a change of 
shirts, of shoes, of socks, and of linen trousers, 
a small dressing-case, a piece of soap in one of 



EPILOGUE 215 

the shoes, two volumes of the Collection Jannct 
lettered Poesies de Charles d'Orleans, a map, and 
a version book containing divers notes in prose 
and the remarkable English roundels of the voy- 
ager, still to this day unpublished: the Commis- 
sary of Chatillon is the only living man who has 
clapped an eye on these artistic trifles. He turned 
the assortment over with a contumelious finger; 
it was plain from his daintiness that he regarded 
the Arefhusa and all his belongings as the very 
temple of infection. Still there was nothing sus- 
picious about the map, nothing really criminal 
except the roundels; as for Charles of Orleans, 
to the ignorant mind of the prisoner, he seemed 
as good as a certificate; and it was supposed the 
farce was nearly over. 

The inquisitor resumed his seat. 

The Commissary (after a pause). Eh hien, 
je vais vous dire ce que vous ctes. Voiis etes alle- 
mand et vous venez chanter a la foire. (Well, 
then, I will tell you w^hat you are. You are a 
German and have come to sing at the fair.) 

The Arethusa. Would you like to hear me 



2i6 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

sing? I believe I could convince you of the 
contrary. 

The Commissary. Pas de plaisantcrie, mon- 
sieur ! 

The Arethusa. Well, sir, oblige me at least 
by looking at this book. Here, I open it with my 
eyes shut. Read one of these songs — read this 
one — and tell me, you who are a man of intel- 
ligence, if it would be possible to sing it at a 
fair? 

The Commissary {critically) . Mais oui. Trcs 
hien. 

The Arethusa. Couiment, monsieur ! What! 
But you do not observe it is antique. It is diffi- 
cult to understand, even for you and me; but for 
the audience at a fair, it would be meaningless. 

The Commissary {taking a pen). Eniln, il 
faut en finir. What is your name? 

The Arethusa {speaking zvith the szvallozuing 
vivacity of the English). Robert-Louis-Stev'ns'n. 

The Commissary {aghast). He! Quoif 

The Arethusa {perceiving and improving his 
advantage) . Rob'rt-Lou's-Stev'ns'n. 



EPILOGUE 217 

The Commissary {after several conflicts unth 
his pen). Eh hien, il faut se passer dii nom. Ca 
ne s'ccrit pas. (Well, we must do without the 
name: it is unspellable.) 

The above is a rough summary of this moment- 
ous conversation, in which I have been chiefly 
careful to preserve the plums of the Commissary; 
but the remainder of the scene, perhaps because 
of his rising anger, has left but little definite in 
the memory of the Arethiisa. The Commissary 
was not, I think, a practised literary man; no 
sooner, at least, had he taken pen in hand and 
embarked on the composition of the proccs-verhal, 
than he became distinctly more uncivil and began 
to show a predilection for that simplest of all 
forms of repartee: '' You lie! " Several times the 
Arethiisa let it pass, and then suddenly flared up, 
refused to accept more insults or to answer fur- 
ther questions, defied the Commissary to do his 
worst, and promised him, if he did, that he should 
bitterly repent it. Perhaps if he had worn this 
proud front from the first, instead of beginning 
with a sense of entertainment and then going on 



2i8 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

to argue, the thing might have turned otherwise; 
for even at this eleventh hour the Commissary 
was visibly staggered. But it was too late; he 
had been challenged ; the proccs-verhal was begun ; 
and he again squared his elbows over his writing, 
and the Arcthusa was led forth a prisoner. 

A step or two down the hot road stood the 
gendarmerie. Thither was our unfortunate con- 
ducted, and there he was bidden to empty forth 
the contents of his pockets. A handkerchief, a 
pen, a pencil, a pipe and tobacco, matches, and 
some ten francs of change: that was all. Not 
a file, not a cipher, not a scrap of writing whether 
to identify or to condemn. The very gendarme 
was appalled before such destitution. 

*' I regret," he said, '* that I arrested you, for I 
see that you are no voyouJ' And he promised 
him every indulgence. 

The Arcthusa, thus encouraged, asked for his 
pipe. That he was told was impossible, but if he 
chewed, he might have some tobacco. He did 
not chew, however, and asked instead to have his 
handkerchief. 



EPILOGUE 219 

" Noil/' said the gendarme. '' Nous avons eu 
dcs histoircs de gens qui sc sont pendus." (No, 
we have had histories of people who hanged 
themselves. ) 

" What," cried the Arethusa. " And is it for 
that you refuse me my handkerchief? But see 
how much more easily I could hang myself in 
my trousers ! " 

The man was struck by the novelty of the idea; 
but he stuck to his colours, and only continued to 
repeat vague offers of service. 

" At least," said the Arethusa, " be sure that 
you arrest my comrade; he will follow me ere- 
long on the same road, and you can tell him by 
the sack upon his shoulders." 

This promised, the prisoner was led round into 
the back court of the building, a cellar door was 
opened, he was motioned down the stair, and bolts 
grated and chains clanged behind his descending 
person. 

The philosophic and still more the imaginative 
mind is apt to suppose itself prepared for any mor- 
tal accident. Prison, among other ills, was one that 



220 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

had been often faced by the undaunted Arcthiisa. 
Even as he went down the stairs, he was teUing 
himself that here was a famous occasion for a 
roundel, and that like the committed linnets of 
the tuneful cavalier, he too would make his prison 
musical. I will tell the truth at once : the roundel 
was never written, or it should be printed in this 
place, to raise a smile. Two reasons interfered: 
the first moral, the second physical. 

It is one of the curiosities of human nature, 
that although all men are liars, they can none of 
them bear to be told so of themselves. To get 
and take the lie with equanimity is a stretch be- 
yond the stoic; and the AretJuisa, who had been 
surfeited upon that insult, was blazing inwardly 
with a white heat of smothered wrath. But the 
physical had also its part. The cellar in which 
he was confined was some feet underground, and 
it was only lighted by an unglazed, narrow aper- 
ture high up in the wall and smothered in the 
leaves of a green vine. The walls were of naked 
masonry, the floor of bare earth ; by way of fur- 
niture there was an earthenware basin, a water- 



EPILOGUE 221 

jug, and a wooden bedstead with a blue-grey cloak 
for bedding. To be taken from the hot air of a 
summer's afternoon, the reverberation of the road 
and the stir of rapid exercise, and plunged into 
the gloom and damp of this receptacle for vaga- 
bonds, struck an instant chill upon the Arethusas 
blood. Now see in how small a matter a hard- 
ship may consist : the floor was exceedingly un- 
even underfoot, with the very spade-marks, I 
suppose, of the labourers who dug the foundations 
of the barrack; and what with the poor twilight 
and the irregular surface, walking was impos- 
sible. The caged author resisted for a good 
while; but the chill of the place struck deeper 
and deeper; and at length, with such reluctance 
as you may fancy, he was driven to climb upon 
the bed and wrap himself in the public covering. 
Tliere, then, he lay upon the verge of shivering, 
plunged in semi-darkness, wound in a garment 
whose touch he dreaded like the plague, and (in 
a spirit far removed from resignation) telling the 
roll of the insults he had just received. These are 
not circumstances favourable to the muse. 



222 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

Meantime (to look at the upper surface where 
the sun was still shining and the guns of sports- 
men were still noisy through the tufted plain) the 
Cigarette was drawing near at his more philo- 
sophic pace. In those days of liberty and health 
he was the constant partner of the Arethusa, and 
had ample opportunity to share in that gentle- 
man's disfavour with the police. Many a bitter 
bowl had he partaken of with that disastrous com- 
rade. He was himself a man born to float easily 
through life, his face and manner artfully recom- 
mending him to all. There was but one suspi- 
cious circumstance he could not carry off, and 
that was his companion. He will not readily for- 
get the Commissary in what is ironically called 
the free town of Frankfort-on-the-Main ; nor the 
Franco-Belgian frontier; nor the inn at La Fere; 
last, but not least, he is pretty certain to remem- 
ber Chatillon-sur-Loire. 

At the town entry, the gendarme culled him like 
a wayside flower ; and a moment later, two per- 
sons, in a high state of surprise, were confronted 
in the Commissary's office. For if the Cigarette 



EPILOGUE 223 

was surprised to be arrested, the Commissary 
was no less taken aback by the appearance and 
appointments of his captive. Here was a man 
about whom there could be no mistake: a man 
of an unquestionable and unassailable manner, in 
apple-pie order, dressed not with neatness merely 
but elegance, ready with his passport, at a word, 
and well supplied with money: a man the Com- 
missary would have doffed his hat to on chance 
upon the highway; and this beau cavalier un- 
blushingly claimed the Aretlnisa for his comrade! 
The conclusion of the interview was foregone; of 
its humours, I remember only one. ''Baronet?" 
demanded the magistrate, glancing up from the 
passport. '' Alors, monsieur j vous etes le His d'un 
baron F'' And when the Cigarette (his one mis- 
take throughout the interview) denied the soft 
impeachment, " Alors/' from the Commissary, " ce 
11' est pas votre passeport ! '' But these were in- 
effectual thunders; he never dreamed of laying 
hands upon the Cigarette; presently he fell into 
a mood of unrestrained admiration, gloating over 
the contents of the knapsack, commending our 



224 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

friend's tailor. Ah, what an honoured guest was 
the Commissary entertaining ! what suitable clothes 
he wore for the warm weather ! what beautiful 
maps, what an attractive work of history he car- 
ried in his knapsack! You are to understand 
there was now but one point of difference be- 
tween them : what w^as to be done with the 
Arethusaf the Cigarette demanding his release, 
the Commissary still claiming him as the dun- 
geon's own. Now it chanced that the Cigarette 
had passed some years of his life in Egypt, where 
he had made acquaintance with two very bad 
things, cholera morbus and pashas; and in the 
eye of the Commissary, as he fingered the volume 
of Michel et, it seemed to our traveller there was 
something Turkish. I pass over this lightly; it 
is highly possible there was some misunderstand- 
ing, highly possible that the Commissary (charmed 
w^ith his visitor) supposed the attraction to be 
mutual and took for an act of growing friend- 
ship what the Cigarette himself regarded as a 
bribe. And at any rate, was there ever a bribe 
more singular than an odd volume of Michel et's 



EPILOGUE 225 

history? The work was promised him for the 
morrow, before our departure ; and presently after, 
either because he had his price, or to. show that 
he was not the man to be behind in friendly 
offices — "' Eh hicn," he said, '' je suppose qu'il 
faut IdcJicr voire camaradeJ' And he tore up 
that feast of humour, the unfinished proccs-verhal. 
Ah, if he had only torn up instead the Arethusas 
roundels ! There were many works burnt at Alex- 
andria, there are many treasured in the British 
Museum, that I could better spare than the proces- 
vcrhal of Chatillon. Poor bubuckled Commis- 
sary ! I begin to be sorry that he never had his 
Michelet : perceiving in him fine human traits, a 
broad-based stupidity, a gusto in his magisterial 
functions, a taste for letters, a ready admiration 
for the admirable. And if he did not admire the 
Arethusa, he was not alone in that. 

To the imprisoned one, shivering under the pub- 
lic covering, there came suddenly a noise of bolts 
and chains. He sprang to his feet, ready to 
welcome a companion in calamity; and instead 

of that, the door was flung wide, the friendly gen- 

15 



226 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

darme appeared above in the strong daylight, and 
with a magnificent gesture (being probably a stu- 
dent of the drama) — " Vous ctcs librc! " he said. 
None too soon for the Arcthusa. I doubt if he had 
been half an hour imprisoned; but by the watch 
in a man's brain (which was the only watch he 
carried) he should have been eight times longer; 
and he passed forth with ecstasy up the cellar 
stairs into the healing warmth of the afternoon 
sun; and the breath of the earth came as sweet 
as a cow's into his nostril ; and he heard again 
(and could have laughed for pleasure) the con- 
cord of delicate noises that we call the hum of life. 
And here it might be thought that my history 
ended; but not so, this was an act-drop and not 
the curtain. Upon what followed in front of the 
barrack, since there was a lady in the case, I 
scruple to expatiate. The wife of the Marechal- 
des-logis was a handsome woman, and yet the 
Arcthusa was not sorry to be gone from her 
society. Something of her image, cool as a peach 
on that hot afternoon, still lingers in his memory: 
yet more of her conversation. '' You have there 



EPILOGUE 227 

a very fine parlour," said the poor gentleman. — 
"Ah," said Madame la Marechale (dcs-logis), 
" you are very well acquainted with such par- 
lours!" And you should have seen with what a 
hard and scornful eye she measured the vagabond 
before her ! I do not think he ever hated the Com- 
missary ; but before that interview was at an end, 
he hated Madame la Marechale. His passion (as 
I am led to understand by one who was present) 
stood confessed in a burning eye, a pale cheek, and 
a trembling utterance; Madame meanwhile tast- 
ing the joys of the matador, goading him with 
barbed words and staring him coldly down. 

It was certainly good to be away from this 
lady, and better still to sit down to an excellent 
dinner in the inn. Here, too, the despised trav- 
ellers scraped acquaintance with their next neigh- 
bour, a gentleman of these parts, returned from 
the day's sport, who had the good taste to find 
pleasure in their society. The dinner at an end, 
the gentleman proposed the acquaintance should 
be ripened in the cafe. 

The cafe was crowded with sportsmen con- 



228 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

clamantly explaining to each other and the world 
the smallness of their bags. About the centre of 
the room, the Cigarette and the Arethiisa sat with 
their new acquaintance; a trio very well pleased, 
for the travellers (after their late experience) were 
greedy of consideration, and their sportsman re- 
joiced in a pair of patient listeners. Suddenly the 
glass door flew open with a crash; the Marechal- 
des-logis appeared in the interval, gorgeously 
belted and befrogged, entered without salutation, 
strode up the room with a clang of spurs and 
weapons, and disappeared through a door at the 
far end. Close at his heels followed the Arethusa's 
gendarme of the afternoon, imitating, with a nice 
shade of difference, the imperial bearing of his 
chief; only, as he passed, he struck lightly with 
his open hand on the shoulder of his late captive, 
and with that ringing, dramatic utterance of which 
he had the secret — " Siiivez! " said he. 

The arrest of the members, the oath of the 
Tennis Court, the signing of the Declaration of 
Independence, Mark Antony's oration, all the 
brave scenes of history, I conceive as having been 



EPILOGUE 229 

not unlike that evening in the cafe at Chatillon. 
Terror breathed upon the assembly. A moment 
later, when the ArcfJmsa had followed his re- 
captors into the farther part of the house, the 
Cigarette found himself alone with his coffee in 
a ring of empty chairs and tables, all the lusty 
sportsmen huddled into corners, all their clamor- 
ous voices hushed in whispering, all their eyes 
shooting at him furtively as at a leper. 

And the Aretlnisa? Well, he had a long, some- 
times a trying, interview in the back kitchen. The 
Marechal-des-logis, who was a very handsome 
man, and I believe both intellio:ent and honest, had 
no clear opinion on the case. He thought the 
Commissary had done wrong, but he did not wish 
to get his subordinates into trouble ; and he pro- 
posed this, that, and the other, to all of which the 
ArctJiusa (with a growing sense of his position) 
demurred. 

" In short," suggested the Aretlnisa, " you want 
to wash your hands of further responsibility? 
Well, then, let me go to Paris." 

The ]\Iarechal-des-lo2:is looked at his watch. 



230 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

" You may leave," said he, " by the ten o'clock 
train for Paris." 

And at noon the next day the travellers were 
telling their misadventure in the dining-room at 
Siron's. 



JUN 24 1905 



--r 



